LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






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In the IVilderness. 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER, 

AUTHOR OF "my SUMMER IN A GARDEN," "BACKLOG STUDIES, 
" SAUNTEKINGS." ETC. 



f/ 




BOSTON: 

HOUGHTON, OSGOOD AND COMPANY. 

S:ije Miijersitje i|rcss, CambriUge, 

1878. 

2: 



2 



.1-^ 




Copyright, 1878, 
BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 



Fraiiklin Press: 

Stereotyped and Printed by 

Rand, Avery, <£t= Co., 

Boston. 



OOE-TENTS. 



IN THE WILDERNESS. 

I. How I KILLED A BeAK 5 

II. Lost IK the "Woods ..... 21 

III. A Fight with a Teout 41 

IV. A-HuKTiNG of the Deek .... 54 
Y. A Character Study . . . . ' , .82 

VI. Camping Out , 124 

HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND . . 147 
'74. How Spuing came est New England. By 

A Reader of " '93 " 149 

3 




"i't^ 



\ 



IN THE WILDEEITESS. 
I. 

HOW I KILLED A BEAR. 




O many conflicting accounts have ap- 
peared about ni}^ casual encounter with 
an Adirondack bear last summer, that 
in justice to the public, to m3'self, and to the 
bear, it is necessar}- to make a plain statement 
of the facts. Besides, it is so seldom I have 
occasion to kill a bear, that the celebration of 
the exploit maj^ be excused. 

The encounter was unpremeditated on both 
sides. I was not hunting for a Uear, and I 
have noTeason to suppose that a bear was look- 
ing for me. The fact is, that we were both out 
blackberr3ing, and met by chance, — the usual 
way. There is among the Adirondack visitors 

5 



IN THE WILDERNESS. 



always a great deal of conversation about bears, 
— a general expression of the wish to see one in 
the woods, and much speculation as to how a 
j)ersQn would act if he or she chanced to meet 
one. But bears are scarce and timid, and ap- 
pear only to a favored few. 

It was a warm da}^ in August, just the sort 
of day when an adventure of any kind seemed 
impossible. But it occurred to the housekeepers 
at our cottage: — there were four of them — to 
send me, to the clearing, on the mountain back 
of the house, to pick blackberries. It was rather 
a series of small clearings, running up into the 
forest, much overgrown with bushes and briers, 
and not unromantic. Cows pastured there, pene- 
trating through the leafy passages from one open- 
ing to another, and browsing among the bushes. 
I was kindly furnished with a six-quart pail, and 
told not to J3e gone long. 

Not from any predatory instinct, but to save 
appearances, I took a gun. It adds to the manl}^ 
aspect of a person with a tin pail if he also 
carries a gun. It was possible I might start up a 



HOW I KILLED A BEAR. 



partridge ; though how I was to hit him, if he 
started up instead of standing still, puzzled me. 
Manj' people use a. shot-gun for partridges. I 
prefer the rifle : it makes a clean job of death, 
and does not prematurely stuff the bird with 
globules of lead. The rifle was a Sharp's, carrj'- 
ing a ball-cartridge (ten to the pound) , — an ex- 
cellent weapon belonging to a friend of mine, 
who had intended, for a good many years back, 
to kill a deer with it. He could hit a tree with it 

— if the wind did not blow, and the atmosphere 
was just right, and the tree was not too far off 

— nearly ever}- time. Of course, the tree must 
have some size. Needless to say that I was at 
that time no sportsman. Years ago I killed a 
robin under the most humiliatii:ig circumstances. 
The bird was _ in a low cheriy-tree. I loaded a 
big shot-gun pretty full, crept up under the tree, 
rested the gun on the fence, with the muzzle 
more than ten feet from the bird, shut both eyes, 
and pulled the trigger. When I got up to see 
what had happened, the robin was scattered about 
under the tree in more than a thousand pieces, 



8 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

no one of which was big enough to enable a 
naturalist to decide from it to what species it 
belonged. This disgusted me with the life of a 
sportsman. I mention the incident to show, that, 
although I went blackberr^ing armed, there was 
not much inequahty between me and the bear. 

In this blackbeny-patch bears had been seen. 
The summer before, our colored cook, accom- 
panied b}^ a little girl of the vicinage, was pick- 
ing berries there one da}- , when a bear came out 
of the woods, and walked towards them. The 
girl took to her heels, and escaped. Aunt Chloe 
was paralyzed with terror. Instead of attempt- 
ing to run, she sat down on the ground where 
she was standing, and began to weep and scream, 
giving herself up for lost. The bear was bewil- 
dered by tliis conduct. He approached and 
looked at her ;* he wallved around and survej^ed 
her. Probably he had never seen a colored per- 
son before, and did not know whether she would 
agree with him : at any rate, after watching her a 
few moments, he turned about, and went into the 
forest. This is an authentic instance of the deli- 



now I KILLED A BEAR. 9 

cate consideration of a bear, and is much more 
remarkable than the forbearance towards the 
African slave of the well-known lion, because the 
bear had no thorn in his foot. 

When I had climbed the hill, I set up m.y rifle 
against a tree, and began picking berries, lured 
on from bush to bush by the black gleam of fruit 
(that always promises more in the distance than 
it realizes when you reach it) ; penetrating farther 
and farther, through leaf-shaded cow-paths flecked 
with sunlight, into clearing after clearing. I 
could hear on all sides the tinkle of bells, the 
cracking of sticks, and the stamping of cattle 
that were taking refuge in the thicket from the 
flies. Occasionally, as I broke through a covert, 
I encountered a meek cow, who stared at me 
stupidly for a second, and then shambled off into 
the brush. I became accustomed to this dumb 
society, and picked on in silence, attributing all 
the wood-noises to the cattle, thinldng nothing 
of mij real bear. In point of fact, however, I 
was thinking all the time of a nice romantic bear, 
and, as I picked, was composing a story about a 



10 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

generous she-bear who had lost her cub, and who 
seized a small girl in this very wood, carried her 
tenderly off to a cave, and brought her up on 
bear's milk and honey. When the girl got big 
enough to run away, moved b}^ her inherited in- 
stincts, she escaped, and came into the valley to 
her father's house (this part of the story was to 
be worked out, so that the child would know her 
father by some family resemblance, and have 
some language in which to address him), and 
told him where the bear lived. The father took 
his gun, and, guided by the unfeehng daughter, 
went into the woods and shot the bear, who 
never made any resistance, and onl}^, when dying, 
turned reproachful eyes upon her murderer. The 
moral of the tale was to be kindness to animals. 

I was in the midst of this tale, when I hap- 
pened to look some rods away to the other edge 
of the clearing, and there was a bear ! He was 
standing on his -hind-legs, and doing just what I 
was doing, — picking blackberries. With one 
paw he bent down the bush, while with the other 
he clawed the berries into his mouth, — green 



HOW I KILLED A BEAR. 11 

ones and all. To say that I was astonished is 
inside the maik. I suddenly discovered that I 
didn't want to see a bear, after all. At about 
the same moment the bear saw me, stopped eat- 
ing berries, and regarded me with a glad sur- 
prise. It is all very well to imagine what you 
would do under such circumstances. Probably 
3^ou wouldn't do it : I didn't. The bear dropped 
down on his fore-feet, and came slowly towards 
me. Climbing a tree was of no use, with so 
good a climber in the rear. If I started to run, 
I had no doubt the bear would give chase ; and 
although a bear cannot run down hill as fast as 
he can run up hill, jQt I felt that he could get 
over this rough, brush-tangled ground faster than 
I could. 

The bear was approaching. It suddenly oc- 
curred to me how I could divert his mind until I 
could fall back upon my military base. My pail 
was nearly full of excellent berries, — much better 
than the bear could pick himself. I put the pail 
'on the ground, and slowly backed awa}^ from it, 
keeping my eye, as beast-tamers do, on the bear. 
The ruse succeeded. 



12 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

The bear came up to the berries, and stopped. 
Not accustomed to eat out of a pail, he tipped it 
over, and nosed about in the fruit, " gorming " 
(if there is such a word) it down, mixed with 
leaves and dirt, like a pig. The bear is a worse 
feeder than the pig. Whenever he disturbs a 
maple-sugar camp in the spring, he alwaj's upsets 
the buckets of sirup, and tramples round in the 
sticky sweets, wasting more than he eats. The 
bear's manners are thoroughly disagreeable. 

As soon as my enemy's head was- down, I 
started and ran. Somewhat out of breath, and 
shaky, I reached my faithful rifle. It was not a 
moment too soon. I heard the bear crashing 
through the brush after me. Enraged at m}^ 
duplicity, he was now coming on with blood in his 
eye. I felt that the time of one of us was 
probably short. The rapidity of thought at such 
moments of peril is well known. I thought an 
octavo volume, had it illustrated and published, 
sold fifty thousand copies, and went to Europe 
on the proceeds, while that bear was loping across 
the clearing. As I was cocking the gun, I made 



HOW I KILLED A BEAR. 13 

a hasty and unsatisfactory review of my whole 
hfe. I noted, that, even in such a compulsory 
review, it is almost impossible to think of any 
good thing you have done. The sins come out 
uncommonly strong. I recollected a newspaper 
subscription I had delayed paying jeavs and 
3'ears ago, until both editor and newspaper were 
dead, and which now never could be paid to all 
eternity. 

The bear was coming on. 

I tried to remember what I had read about 
encounters with bears. I couldn't recall an in- 
stance in which a man had run away from a bear 
in the woods and escaped, although I recalled 
plenty where the bear had run from the man and 
got off. I tried to think what is the best way to 
kill a bear with a gun, when you are not near 
enough to club him with the stock. My first 
thought was to fire at his head ; to plant the ball 
between his eyes : but this is a dangerous experi- 
ment. The bear's brain is very small : and, un- 
less 3^ou hit that, the bear does not mind a bullet 
in his head ; that is, not at the time. I remem- 



14 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

berecl that the instant death of the bear would 
follow a bullet planted just back of his fore-leg, 
and sent into his heart. This spot is also diffi- 
cult to reach, unless the bear stands oflf, side 
towards you, like a target. I finally determined 
to fire at him generally. 

The bear was coming on. 

The contest seemed to me ver}^ different from 
an}^ thing at Creedmoor. I had carefulh' read the 
reports of the shooting there ; but it was not easy 
to apply the experience I had thus acquired. I 
hesitated whether I had better fire lying on my 
stomach ; or lying on tcvj back, and resting the gun 
on my toes. But in neither position, I reflected, 
could I see the bear until he was upon me. The 
range was too short ; and the bear wouldn't wait 
for me to examine the thermometer, and note the 
direction of the wind. Trial of the Creedmoor 
method, therefore, had to be abandoned ; and I 
bitterly regretted that I had not read more ac- 
counts of offhand shooting. 

For the bear was coming on. 

I tried to fix m}^ last thoughts upon my family. 



HOW I KILLED A BEAR. 15 

As my family is small, this was not difficult. 
Dread of displeasing my wife, or hurting her 
feelings, was uppermost in my mind. What 
would be her anxiety as hour after hour passed 
on, and I did not return ! What would the rest of 
the household think as the afternoon passed, and 
no blackberries came ! What would be m}' wife's 
mortification when the news was brought that her 
husband had been eaten by a bear ! I cannot 
imagine any thing more ignominious than to have 
a husband eaten b}^ a bear. And this was not 
my only anxiety. The mind at such times is not 
under control. With the gravest fears the most 
whimsical ideas will occur. I looked beyond the 
mourning friends, and thought what kind of an 
epitaph they would be compelled to put upon the 
stone. Something like this : — 

HERE LIE THE REMAINS 
OF 



EATEN BY A BEAR 

AuQ-, 20, 1877. 



It is a very unheroic and even disagreeable 



16 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

epitaph. That " eaten hy a bear " is intolerable. 
It is grotesque. And then I thought what an 
inadequate language the English is for compact 
expression. It would not answer to put upon the 
stone simpl}^ " eaten ; " for that is indefinite, and 
requires explanation : it might mean eaten by a 
cannibal. This difficulty could not occur in the 
German, where essen signifies the act of feeding 
by a man, and fr essen by a beast. How simple 
the thing would be in German ! — 

HIER LIEGT 
HOCHWOHLGEBOREN 



GEFRESSEN 

Aug. 20, 1877. 

That explains itself. The well-born one was 
eaten by a beast, and presumably by a bear, — 
an animal that has a bad reputation since the 
daj'S of Ehsha. 

The bear was coming on ; he had, in fact, come 
on. I judged that he could see the whites of my 
eyes. All my subsequent reflections were con- 
fused. I raised the gun, covered the bear's 



HOW I KILLED A BEAR. 17 

breast with the sight, and let drive. Then I 
turned, and ran hke a deer. I did not hear the 
bear pursuing. I looked back. The bear had 
stopped. He was tying down. I then remem- 
bered that the best thing to do after having fired 
your gun is to reload it. I shpped in a charge, 
keeping my eyes on the bear. He never stirred. 
I wallied back suspiciously. There was a quiver 
in the hind-legs, but no other motion. Still he 
might be shamming : bears often sham. To 
make sure, I approached, and put a ball into his 
head. He didn't mind it now : he minded noth- 
ing. Death had come to him with a merciful 
suddenness. He was calm in death. In order 
that he might remain so, I blew his brains out, 
and then started for home. I had killed a bear ! 

Notwithstanding my excitement, I managed to 
saunter into the house with an unconcerned air. 
There was a chorus of voices : — 

" Where are 3'our blackberries? " 

" Why were you gone so long? " 

" Where's your pail? " 

"I left the pail." 



18 m THE WILDERNESS. 

<- ' Left the pail ? What for ? ' * 

' ' A bear wanted it. " 

'' Oh, nonsense ! " 

"Well, the last I saw of it, a bear had it." 

" Oh, come ! You didn't reallj^ see a bear? *' 

" Yes, but I did really see a real bear." 

'*' Did he run? " 

" Yes : he ran after me." 

" I don't believe a word of it. What did yo\x 
do?" 

"Oh! nothing particular — except kill the 
bear." 

Cries of "Gammon!" "Don't believe it!" 
" Where's the bear? " 

"If 3"ou want to see the bear, you must go 
up into the woods. I couldn't bring him down 
alone." 

Having satisfied the household that something 
extraordinar}^ had occurred, and excited the post- 
humous fear of some of them for my own safety, 
I went down into the valley to get help. The 
great bear-hunter, who keeps one of the summer 
boarding-houses, received my story with a smile 



HOW I KILLED A BEAR. 19 

of incredulity ; and the incredulity spread to the 
other inhabitants and to the boarders as soon as 
the story was known. However, as I insisted in 
all soberness, and offered to lead them to the 
bear, a party of fort}^ or fifty people at last 
started off with me to bring the bear in. No- 
body believed there was any bear in the case ; but 
everybody who could get a gun carried one ; and 
we went into the woods armed with guns, pistols, 
pitchforks, and sticks, against all contingencies 
or- surprises, — a crowd made up mostty of scoff- 
ers and jeerers. 

But when I led the way to the fatal spot, and 
pointed out the bear, lying peacefully wrapped 
in his own skin, something like terror seized the 
boarders, and genuine excitement the natives. 
It was a no-mistake bear, by George! and the 
hero of the fight — well, I will not insist upon 
that. But what a i^rocession that was, canying 
the bear home ! and what a congregation was 
speedily gathered in the valley to see the bear ! 
Our best preacher up there never drew any thing 
lilve it on Sunday. 



20 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

And I must say that in}" particular friends, who 
were sportsmen, behaved very well, on the whole. 
They didn't deny that it was a bear, although 
they said it was small for a bear. Mr. Deane, 
who is equall}^ good with a rifle and a rod, admit- 
ted that it was a very fair shot. He is probably 
the best salmon-fisher in the United States, and 
he is an equally good hunter. I suppose there is 
no person in America who is more desirous to 
kill a moose than he. But he needlessly re- 
marked, after he had examined the wound in the 
bear, that he had seen that kind of a shot made 
by a cow's horn. 

This sort of talk affected me not. When I 
went to sleep that night, my last delicious thought 
was, " I've killed a bear ! " 




II. 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 



T ought to be said, by wa}^ of explana- 
tion, that my being lost in the woods 
was not premeditated. Nothing could 
have been more informal. This apolog}' can be 
necessary- only to those who are familiar with the 
Adirondack literature. Any person not familiar 
with it would see the absurditj^ of one going to 
the Northern Wilderness with the deliberate ynir- 
pose of writing about himself as a lost man. It 
may be true, that a book about this wild tract 
would not be recognized as complete without a 
lost-man stor}^ in it ; since it is almost as easy 
for a stranger to get lost in the Adirondacks as 
in Boston. I merely desire to say that my 
unimportant adventure is not narrated in answer 

21 



22 fcV THE WILDERNESS. 

li . 

to the popular, demand, and I do not wish to be 
held responsitle for its variation from the t3'pical 
character of sich experiences. 

We had b^n in camp a week, on the Upper 
Ausable Lakejfflj This is a gem — emerald or tur- 
quoise as tMPght changes it — set in the virgin 
forest. It is not a large body of water, is ir^ 
regular in form, and about a mile and a half in 
length ; but in the sweep of its wooded shores, 
and the lovely contour of the lofty mountains 
that guard it, the lake is probably the most 
charming in America. Why the young ladies 
and gentlemen who camp there occasionally vex 
the days and nights with hooting, and singing 
sentimental songs, is a mj-stery even to the 
laughing loon. 

I left m}^ companions there one Saturday 
morning, to return to Keene Valley, intending to 
fish down the Ausable River. The Upper Lake 
discharges itself into the Lower by a brook 
which winds through a mile and a half of swamp 
and woods. Out of the north end of the Lower 
Lake, which is a huge sink in the mountains, and 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 23 

mirrors the savage precipices, the Ausable breaks 
its rocky barriers, and flows through a wild 
gorge, several miles, to the valley below. Be- 
tween the Lower Lake and the settlements is 
an extensive forest, traversed by a cart-path, 
admirably constrocted of loose stones, roots of 
trees, decaj^ed logs, slippery rocks, and mud. 
The gorge of the river forms its western bounda- 
ry. I followed this caricature of a road a mile 
or more ; then gave my luggage to the guide to 
carr}^ home, and struck off through the forest, bj'' 
compass, to the river. I promised myself an 
exciting scramble down this httle-frequented 
caiion, and a creel full of trout. There was no 
difficult}^ in finding the river, or in descending 
the steep precipice to its bed : getting into a 
scrape is usuall}^ the easiest part of it. The 
river is strewn with bowlders, big and little, 
through which the amber water rushes with an 
unceasing thunderous roar, now j)lunging down 
in white falls, then swirling round in dark pools. 
The daj', alread}- past meridian, was delightful ; 
at least, the blue strip of it I could see overhead. 



24 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

Better pools and rapids for trout never were, I 
thonght, as I concealed myself behind a bowlder, 
and, made the first cast. There is nothing lil^e 
the thrill of expectation over the first throw in 
unfamiliar waters. Fishing is like gambUng, in 
that failure only excites hope of a fortunate 
throw next time. There was no rise to the 
"leader" on the first cast, nor on the twenty- 
first ; and I cautiously worked my way down 
stream, throwing right and left. When I had 
gone half a mile, my opinion of the character of 
the pools was unchanged : never were there such 
places for trout ; but the trout were out of their 
places. Perhaps they didn't care for the fly : 
some trout seem to be so unsophisticated as to 
prefer the worm. I replaced the fly with a baited 
hook : the worm squirmed ; the waters rushed 
and roared ; a cloud sailed across the blue : no 
trout rose to the lonesome opportunit}^ There 
-is a certain companionship in the presence of 
trout, especially when 3^ou can feel them flopping 
in your fish-basket ; but it became evident that 
there were no trout in this wiklerness, and a 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 25 

sense of isolation for the first time came over me. 
There was no living thing near. The liver had 
by this time entered a deeper gorge ; walls of 
rocks rose perpendicularly on either side, — pic- 
turesque rocks, painted many colors by the oxide 
of iron. It was not possible to climb out of the 
gorge ; it was impossible to find a way by the 
side of the river ; and getting down the bed, 
over the falls, and through the flumes, was not 
easy, and consumed time. 

Was that thunder ? Very likely. But thunder- 
showers are alwaj^s brewing in these mountain- 
fortresses, and it did not occur to me that there 
was any thing personal in it. Very soon, how- 
ever, the hole in the sky closed in, and the rain 
dashed down. It seemed a providential time to 
eat my luncheon ; and I took shelter under a 
scraggy pine that had rooted itself in the edge of 
the rocky slope. The shower soon passed, and I 
continued m}^ journey, creeping over the slippery 
rocks, and continuing to show my confidence in 
the unresponsive trout. The way grew wilder 
and more grewsome. The thunder began again, 



26 I]^ THE WILDERNESS. 

rolling along over the tops of the mountains, and 
reverberating in sharp concussions in the gorge : 
the lightning also darted down into the darkening 
passage, and then the rain. Every enlightened 
being, even if he is in a fisherman's dress of shirt 
and pantaloons, hates to get wet ; and I ignomin- 
iously crept under the edge of a sloping bowlder. 
It was all very well at first, until streams of water 
began to crawl along the face of the rock, and 
trickle down the back of my neck. This was re- 
fined misery, unheroic and humiliating, as suffer- 
ing alwaj's is when unaccompanied by resignation. 
A longer time than I knew was consumed in 
this and repeated eff'orts to wait for the slacken- 
ing and renewing storm to pass away. In the 
intervals of calm I still fished, and even de- 
scended to what a sportsman considers incredible 
baseness: I put a "sinker" on my line. It is 
the practice of the country-folk, whose only 
object is to get fish, to use a good deal of bait, 
sink the hook to the bottom of the pools, and 
wait the slow appetite of the summer trout. I 
tried this also. I might as well have fished in a 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 27 

pork-barrel. It is true, that, in one deep, black, 
round pool, I lured a small trout from the bottom, 
and deposited him in the creel ; but it was an 
accident. Though I sat there in the awful silence 
(the roar of water and thunder only emphasized 
the stillness) full half an hour, I was not en- 
couraged bj^ another nibble. Hope, however, did 
not die : I always expected to find the trout in 
the next flume ; and so I toiled slowly on, uncon- 
scious of the passing time. At each turn of the 
stream I expected to see the end, and at each 
turn I saw a long, narrow stretch of rocks and 
foaming water. Climbing out of the ravine was, 
in most places, simply impossible ; and I began to 
look with interest for a slide, where bushes rooted 
in the scant earth would enable me to scale the 
precipice. 1 did not doubt that I was nearly 
through the gorge. I could at length see the 
huge form of the Giant of the Valley, scarred 
with avalanches, at the end of the vista ; and it 
seemed not far off. But it kept its distance, as 
only a mountain can, while I stumbled and slid 
down the rocky way. The rain had now set in 



28 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

with persistence, and snddenly I became aware 
that it was growing dark ; and I said to myself, 
'' If you don't wish to spend the night in this hor- 
rible chasm, you'd better escape speedily." For- 
tunately I reached a place where the face of the 
precipice was bush-grown, and with considerable 
labor scrambled up it. 

Having no doubt that I was within half a mile, 
perhaps within a few rods, of the house above 
the entrance of the gorge, and that, in any event, 
I should fall into the cart-path in a few minutes, 
I struck boldly into the forest, congratulating 
myself on having escaped out of the river. vSo 
sure was I of my whereabouts, that I did not 
note the bend of the river, nor look at my com- 
pass. The one trout in my basket was no burden, 
and I stepped hghtly out. 

The forest was of hard- wood, and open, except 
for a thick undergrowth of moose-bush. It was 
raining, — in fact, it had been raining, more or 
less, for a month, — and the woods were soaked. 
This moose-bush is most annoying stuff to travel 
through in a rain ; for the broad leaves slap one 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 29 

ill the face, and sop him with wet. The way 
grew every moment more clingy. The heavy 
clouds above the thick fohage brought night on 
prematurely. It was decidedly premature to a 
near-sighted man, whose glasses the rain rendered 
useless : such a person ought to be at home 
eaii}^ On leaving the river-bank I had borne 
to the left, so as to be sure to strike either the 
clearing or the road, and not wander off into the 
measureless forest. I confidently pursued this 
course, and went gsijly on b}^ the left flank. 
That I did not come to any opening or path, only 
showed that I had slightly mistaken the distance : 
I was going in the right direction. 

I was so certain of this, that I quickened my 
pace, and got up with alacrity eveiy time I tum- 
bled down amid the shppery leaves and catch- 
ing roots, and hurried on. And I kept to the 
left. It even occurred to me that I was turning 
to the left so much, that I might come back to 
the river again. It grew more dusk}- , and rained 
more violently ; but there was nothing alarming 
in the situation, since I knew exactly where I 



30 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

was. It was a little mortifying that I had mis- 
calculated the distance : yet, so far was I from 
feeling any uneasiness about this, that I quick- 
ened my pace again, and, before I knew it, was 
in a full run ; that is, as full a run as a person 
can indulge in in the dusk, with so many trees in 
the wa}^ No nervousness, but simply a reason- 
able desire to get there. I desired to look upon 
mj^self as the person "not lost, but gone before." 
As time passed, and darkness fell, and no clear- 
ing or road appeared, I ran a little faster. It 
didn't seem possible that the peo^Dle had moved, 
or the road been changed ; and yet I was sure of 
my direction. I went on with an energ}^ in- 
creased by the ridiculousness of the situation, the 
danger that an experienced woodsman was in 
of getting home late for supper ; the lateness of 
the meal being nothing to the gibes of the un- 
lost. How long I kept this course, and how far 
I went on, I do not know; but suddenly I 
stumbled against an ill-placed tree, and sat down 
on the soaked ground, a trifle out of breath. It 
then occurred to me tliat I had better verify my 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 31 

course by the compass. There was scarcely hght 
enough to distinguish the black end of the needle. 
To my amazement, the compass, which was made 
near Greenwich, was wrong. Allowing for the 
natural variation of the needle, it was absurdly 
wrong. It made out that I was going south 
when I was going north. It intimated, that, in- 
stead of turning to the left, I had been making 
a cii'cuit to the right. According to the compass, 
the Lord only knew where I was. 

The inclination of jpersons in the woods to 
travel in a ckcle is unexplained. I suppose it 
arises from the sym^oathy of the legs with the 
brain. Most people reason in a circle: their 
minds go round and round, alwaj's in the same 
track. For the last half-hour I had been saying 
over a sentence that started itself: " I wonder 
where that road is ! " I had said it over till it 
had lost all meaning. I kejDt going round on it ; 
and 3^et I could not believe that my body had 
been travelling in a circle. Not being able to 
recognize any tracks, I have no evidence that I 
had so travelled, except the general testimony of 
lost men. 



32 IN TEE WILDERNESS. 

The compass annoj^ed me. I've known ex- 
perienced guides utterty discredit it. It couldn't 
be that I was to turn about, and go the way I 
had come. Nevertheless, I said to mj'sclf, 
" You'd better keep a cool head, my boy, or you 
are in for a night of it. Better listen to science 
than to spunli." And I resolved to heed the 
impartial needle. I was a little weary of the 
rough tramping : but it was necessarj^ to be mov- 
ing ; for, with wet clothes and the night air, I 
was decidedly chill}^ I turned towards the north, 
and slipped and stumbled along. A more un- 
inviting forest to pass the night in I never saw. 
Every thing was soaked. If I became exhausted, 
it would be necessar}' to build a fire ; and, as I 
waUied on, I couldn't find a dry bit of wood. 
Even if a little punk were discovered in a rotten 
log, I had no hatchet to cut fuel. I thought it 
all over calml}'. I had the usual three matches 
in my pocket. I knew exactl}^ what would hap- 
pen if I tried to build a fire. The first match 
would prove to be wet. The second match, when 
struck, would shine and smell, and lizz a little, 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 33 

and then go out. There would be only one 
match left. Death would ensue if it failed. I 
should get close to the log, crawl under my hat, 
strike the match, see it catch, flicker, almost go 
out (the reader painfully excited by this time) , 
blaze up, nearly expire, and finally fire the punk, 
— thank God! And I said to myself, "The 
I)ublic don't want any more of this thing : it is 
played out. Either have a box of matches, or 
let the first one catch fire." 

In this gloomy mood I plunged along. The 
prospect was cheerless ; for, apart from the com- 
fort that a fire would give, it is necessary, at 
night, to keep off the wild beasts. I fancied I 
could hear the tread of the stealthy brutes fol- 
lowing their prey. But there was one source of 
profound satisfaction, — the catamount had been 
killed. Mr. Colvin, the triangulating surve^^or 
of the Adirondacks, killed him in his last official 
report to the State. Whether he despatched him 
with a theodolite or a barometer does not mat- 
ter : he is officially dead, and none of the travel- 
lers can kill him any more. Yet he has served 
them a good turn. 



34 IN THE WILDERNESS. 



I knew that catamount well. One night when 
we lay in the bogs of the South Beaver Meadow, 
under a canopy of mosquitoes, the serene mid- 
night was parted by a wild and human-like cry 
from a neighboring mountain. "That's a cat," 
said the guide. I felt in a moment that it was 
the A^oice of " modern cultchah." "Modern cul- 
ture," says Mr. Joseph Cook in a most impres- 
sive period, — " modern culture is a child crying 
in the wilderness, and with no voice but a cry." 
That describes the catamount exactly. The 
next da}^, when we ascended the mountain, we 
came upon the traces of this brute, — a spot 
where he had stood and cried in the night ; and I 
confess that my hair rose with the consciousness 
of his recent presence, as it is said to do when a 
spiiit iDasses 'hj. 

Whatever consolation the absence of cata- 
mount in a dark, drenched, and howling wilder- 
ness can impart, that I experienced ; but I 
thought what a satire upon my present condition 
was modern culture, with its plain thinking and 
liigh living ! It was impossible to get much sat- 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 35 

isfaction out of the real and the ideal, — the me 
and the not-me. At this time what impressed 
me most was the absurdity of my position 
looked at in the light of modern civilization and 
all m}' advantages and acquirements. It seemed 
pitiful that societ}^ could do absolutely nothing 
for me. It was, in fact, humiliating to reflect that 
it would now be profitable to exchange all m}^ 
possessions for the woods instinct of the most 
unlettered guide. I began to doubt the value of 
the " culture " that blunts the natural instincts. 

It began to be a question whether I could hold 
out to waUi all night ; for I must travel, or perish. 
And now I imagined that a spectre was wah^ing 
b}^ my side. This was Famine. To be sure, I 
had only recently eaten a heart}^ luncheon : but 
the pangs of hunger got hold on me when I 
thought that I should have no supper, no break- 
fast ; and, as the i^rocession of unattainable meals 
stretched before me, I grew hungrier and hun- 
grier. I could feel that I was becoming gaunt, 
and wasting away : already I seemed to be ema- 
ciated. It is astonishing how speedily a jocund, 



36 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

well-conditioned human being can be trans- 
formed into a spectacle of povert}' and want. 
Lose a man in the woods, drench him, tear his 
pantaloons, get his imagination running on his 
lost supper and the cheerful fireside that is ex- 
pecting him, and he will become haggard in an 
hour. I am not dwelling upon these things to 
excite the reader's sympathy, but only to advise 
him, if he contemplates an adventure of this 
kind, to provide himself with matches, kindling- 
wood, something more to eat than one raw trout, 
and not to select a rainy night for it. 

Nature is so pitiless, so unresponsive, to a per- 
son in trouble ! I had read of the soothing com- 
panionship of the forest, the pleasure of the 
pathless woods. But I thought, as I stumbled 
along in the dismal actualit}', that, if I ever got 
out of it, I would write a letter to the news- 
papers, exposing the whole thing. There is an 
impassive, stolid brutalit}^ about the woods, that 
has never been enough insisted on. I tried to 
keep my mind fixed upon the fact of man's su- 
periority to Nature ; his ability to dominate and 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 37 

outwit her. ^Ij situation was an amusing satire 
on this theor}'. I fancied that I could feel a sneer 
in the woods at my detected conceit. There was 
something personal in it. The downpour of the 
rain and the slipperiness of the ground were ele- 
ments of discomfort ; but there was, besides 
these, a kind of terror in the ver}- character of 
the forest itself. I think this arose not more 
from its immensit}' than from the kind of stolidity 
to which I have alluded. It seemed to me that 
it would be a sort of relief to kick the trees. I 
don't wonder that the bears fall to, occasional!}^, 
and scratch the bark off the great pines and 
maples, tearing it angrily away. One must have 
some vent to his feelings. It is a coimnon expe- 
rience of people lost in the woods to lose their 
heads ; and even the woodsmen themselves are 
not free from this panic when some accident has 
thrown them out of their reckoning. Fright un- 
settles the judgment : the oppressive silence of 
the woods is a vacuum in which the mind goes 
astra}^ It's a hollow sham, this pantheism, I 
said ; bcina: ' ' one with Nature ' ' is all humbuo; : 



38 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

I should like to see soniebod3% Man, to be sure, 
is of very little account, and soon gets bej'ond his 
depth ; but the society of the least human being 
is better than this gigantic indifference. The 
"rapture on the lonety shore " is agTeeable only 
when 3^ou know 3^ou can at any moment go home. 
I had now given up all expectation of finding 
the road, and Y\^as steering my way as well as I 
could northward towards the valley. In my haste 
I made slow progress. Probably the distance I 
travelled was short, and the time consumed not 
long ; but I seemed to be adding mile to mile, and 
hour to hour. I had time to review the incidents 
of the Russo-Turkish war, and to forecast the 
entire Eastern question ; I outlined the characters 
of all m}' companions left in camp, and sketched 
in a sort of comedy the sympathetic and dispar- 
aging observations the}^ would make on my ad- 
venture ; I repeated something like a thousand 
times, without contradiction, "What a fool j^ou 
were to leave the river ! " I stopped twenty times, 
thinking I heard its loud roar, alwa3's deceived 
by the wind in the tree-tops ; I began to enter- 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 39 

tain serious doubts about the compass, — when 
suddenl}^ I became aware that I was no longer on 
level ground : I was descending a slope ; I was 
actual!}^ in a ravine. In a moment more I was 
in a brook newl}^ formed by the rain. " Thank 
Heaven 1 " I cried : " this I shall follow, whatever 
conscience or the compass sa3^s." In this region, 
all streams go, sooner or later, into the valley. 
This ravine, this stream, no doubt, led to the 
river. I splashed and tumbled along down it in 
mud and water. Down hill we went together, the 
fall showing that I must have wandered to high 
ground. AVlien I guessed that I must be close to 
the river, I suddenly stepped into mud up to my 
ankles. It was the road, — running, of course, 
the wrong wa}^, but still the blessed road. It 
was a mere- canal of hquid mud. ; but man had 
made it, and it would take me home. I was at 
least three miles from the point I supposed I was 
near at sunset, and I had before me a toilsome 
walk of six or seven miles, most of the way in a 
ditch ; but it is truth to say that I enjoyed every 
step of it. I was safe ; I knew where I was ; and 



40 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

I could liaA^e walked till morning. The mind had 
again got the upper hand of the bod}^, and began 
to plume itself on its superiority : it was even 
disposed to doubt whether it had been "lost'* 
at all. 




III. 



A FIGHT WITH A TROUT. 




ROUT-FISHING in the Adirondacks 
would be a more attractive pastime than 
it is, but for the popular notion of its 
danger. The trout is a retiring and harmless 
animal, except when he is aroused, and forced 
into a combat ; and then his agility, fierceness, 
and vindictiveness become apparent. No one 
who has studied the excellent pictures represent- 
ing men in an open boat, exposed to the assaults 
of long, enraged trout flying at them through the 
open ail' with open mouth, ever ventures with his 
rod upon the lonel}^ lakes of the forest without a 
certain terror, or ever reads of the exploits of 
daring fishermen without a feeling of admiration 
for their heroism. Most of their adventures are 



42 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

thrilling, and all of them are, in narration, more 
or less unjust to the trout : in fact, the object of 
them seems to be to exhibit, at the expense of 
the trout, the shrewdness, the skill, and the mus- 
cular power of the sportsman. My own simple 
story has few of these recommendations. 

We had built our bark camp one summer, and 
were staying on one of the popular lakes of the 
Saranac region. It would be a very pretty re- 
gion if it were not so flat, if the margins of 
the lakes had not been flooded bj^ dams at the 
outlets, — which have killed the trees, and left a 
rim of ghastly dead-wood like the swamps of 
the under- world pictured by Dore's bizarre pen- 
cil, — and if the pianos at the hotels were in tune. 
It would be an excellent sporting-region also (for 
there is water enough) if the flsh commissioners 
would stock the waters, and if previous hunters 
had not pulled all the hair and skin ofl" from the 
deer's tails. Formerly sportsmen had a habit of 
catching the deer by the tails, and of being 
dra2:2:ed in mere w^antonness round and roinid 
the shores. It is well known, that, if you seize 



A FIGHT WITH A TROUT. 43 

a deer b}" this "holt," the skin will slip off like 
the peel from a banana. This reprehensible prac- 
tice was carried so far, that the traveller is now 
hourl}^ pained by the sight of peeled-tail deer 
mournful^ sneaking about the wood. 

We had been hearing, for weeks, of a small 
lake in the heart of the virgin forest, some ten 
miles from onr camp, which was alive with trout, 
unsophisticated, hungry trout : the inlet to it was 
described as stiff with them. In my imagination 
I saw them lying there in ranks and rows, each 
a foot long, three tiers deep, a solid mass. The 
lake had never been visited, except by stray 
sable-hunters in the winter, and was known as 
the Unknown Pond. I determined to explore 
it ; fulh' expecting, however, that it would prove 
to be a delusion, as such mj^sterious haunts of 
the trout usuall}^ are. Confiding my purpose to 
Luke, we secretl}^ made our preparations, and 
stole awa}^ from the shant}^ one morning at day- 
break. Each of us carried a boat, a pair of 
blankets, a sack of bread, pork, and maple- 
sugar ; while I had m}^ case of rods, creel, and 



44 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

book of flies, and Luke had an axe and the 
kitchen utensils. We think nothing of loads of 
this sort in the woods. 

Five miles through a tamarack- swamp brought 
us to the inlet of U;iknown Pond, upon which 
we embarked our fleet, and paddled down its 
vagrant waters. They were at first sluggish, 
winding among triste fir-trees, but graduall}^ 
developed a strong current. At the end of 
three miles a loud roar ahead warned us that 
we were approaching rapids, falls, and cascades. 
We paused. The danger was unknown. We 
had our choice of shouldering our loads and 
making a detour through the woods, or of 
"shooting the rapids." Naturally we chose the 
more dangerous course. Shooting the rapids 
has often been described, and I will not repeat 
the description here. It is needless to say that 
I drove my frail bark through the boiling rapids, 
over the successive water- falls, amid rocks and 
vicious eddies, and landed, half a mile below, 
with whitened hair and a boat half full of water ; 
and that the guide was upset, and boat, contents, 
and man were strewn along the shore. 



1^_ 
A FIGHT WITH A TROUT. 45 

After this common experience we went quickly 
on our journey, and, a couple of hours before 
sundown, reached the lake. If I live to my 
djing-day, I never shall forget its appearance. 
The lake is almost an exact circle, about a quar- 
ter of a mile in diameter. The forest about it 
was untouched by axe, and unkilled by artificial 
flooding. The azure water had a perfect setting 
of evergreens, in which all the shades of the 
fir, the balsam, the pine, and the spruce, were 
perfect^ blended ; and at intervals on the shore 
in the emerald rim blazed the ruby of the car- 
dinal-flower. It was at once evident that the 
unruffled waters had never been vexed b}^ the 
keel of a boat. But what chiefly attracted my 
attention, and amused me, was the boiling of 
the water, the bubbling and breaking, as if the 
lake were a vast kettle, with a fire underneath. 
A t^TO would have been astonished at this com- 
mon phenomenon ; but sportsmen will at once 
understand me when I say that the water boiled 
with the breaking trout. I studied the surface 
for some time to see upon what sort of flies 



46 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

they were feeding, in order to suit my cast to 
their appetites ; but they seemed to be at play 
rather than feeding, leaping high in the air in 
graceful curves, and tumbling about each other 
as we see them in the Adirondack pictures. 

It is well known that no person who regards 
his reputation will ever kill a trout with any 
thing but a fly. It requires some training on 
the part of the trout to take to this method. 
The uncultivated, unsophisticated trout in unfre- 
quented waters prefers the bait ; and the rural 
people, whose sole object in going a-fishing ap- 
pears to be to catch fish, indulge them in their 
primitive taste for the worm. No sportsman, 
however, will use any thing but a fly, except 
he happens to be alone. 

While Luke launched my boat, and arranged 
his seat in the stern, I prepared my rod and 
line. The rod is a bamboo, weighing seven 
ounces, which has to be spliced with a winding 
of sillv thread every time it is used. This is a 
tedious process ; but, by fastening the joints in 
this way, a uniform spring is secm-ed in the rod. 



A FIGHT WITH A TROUT. 47 

No one devoted to high art would think of using 
a socket joint. My Hne was forty 3'ards of un- 
twisted silk upon a multiplying reel. The ' ' lead- 
er" (I am very particular about my leaders) 
had been made to order from a domestic animal 
with which I had been acquainted. The fisher- 
man requires as good a catgut as the violinist. 
The interior of the house-cat, it is well known, 
is exceedingly sensitive ; but it may not be so 
well known that the reason why some cats leave 
the room in distress when a piano-forte is played 
is because the two instruments are not in the 
same ke}^, and the \dbrations of the chords of the 
one are in discord with the catgut of the other. 
On six feet of this superior article I fixed three 
artificial flies, — a simx)le brown hackle, a gray 
bod}^ with scarlet wings, and one of my own 
invention, which I thought would be new to the 
most experienced fly-catcher. The trout-fl}^ does 
not resemble any known species of insect. It 
is a "conventionalized" creation, as we say of 
ornamentation. The theory is, that, fl3^-fishing 
being a high art, the fly must not be a tame 



48 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

imitation of nature, but an artistic suggestion of 
it. It requires an artist to construct one ; and 
not every bungler can take a bit of red flannel, 
a peacock's feather, a flash of tinsel thread, a 
cock's plume, a section of a hen's wing, and 
fabricate a tin}^ object that will not look like 
any flj^, but still will suggest the universal con- 
ventional fly. 

I took my stand in the centre of the tipsy 
boat ; and Luke shoved off, and slowly paddled 
towards some lilj^-pads, while I began casting, 
unlimbering my tools, as it were. The fish had 
all disappeared. I got out, perhaps, fifty feet 
of line, with no response, and gradually in- 
creased it to one hundred. It is not difficult to 
learn to cast ; but it is difficult to learn not to 
snap ofi" the flies at eyerj throw. Of this, how- 
ever, we will not speak. I continued casting for 
some moments, until I became satisfied that 
there had been a miscalculation. Either the 
trout were too green to know what I was at, or 
the}^ were dissatisfied with my offers. I reeled 
in, and changed the flies (that is, the fly that was 



A FIGHT WITH A TROUT. 49 

not snapped off). After studj'ing the color of 
the sky, of the water, and of the fohage, and the 
moderated light of the afternoon, I put on a 
series of beguilers, all of a subdued brillianc}^, 
in harmony with the approach of evening. At 
the second cast, which was a short one, I saw a 
splash where the leader fell, and gave an excited 
jerk. The next instant I perceived the game, 
and did not need the unfeigned " dam " of Luke 
to convince me that I had snatched his felt hat 
from his head, and deposited it among the lilies. 
Discouraged by this, we whirled about, and pad- 
dled over to the inlet, where a little ripple was 
visible in the tinted light. At the very first cast 
I saw that the hour had come. Three trout 
leaped into the air. The danger of this ma- 
noeuvre all fishermen understand. It is one of 
the commonest in the woods : three heav}^ trout 
taking hold at once, rushing in different direc- 
tions, smash the tackle into flinders. I evaded 
this catch, and threw again. I recall the mo- 
ment. A hermit thrush, on the tip of a balsam, 
uttered his long, liquid, evening note. Happen- 



50 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

ing to look over my shoulder, I saw the peak of 
Marcy gleam ros}^ in the sky (I can't help it that 
Marcy is iSfty miles off, and cannot be seen from 
this region : these incidental touches are always 
used) . The hundred feet of silk swished through 
the air, and the tail-fly fell as lightly on the water 
as a three-cent-piece (which no slamming wiU 
give the weight of a ten) drops upon the contri- 
bution-plate. Instantly there was a rush, a 
swirl. I struck, and " Got him, by — ! " Never 
mind what Luke said I got him by. " Out on a 
fly ! " continued that irreverent guide ; but I told 
him to back water, and make for the centre of 
the lake. The trout, as soon as he felt the prick 
of the hook, was off like a shot, and took out 
the whole of the hue with a rapidity that made 
it smoke. "Give him the butt ! " shouted Luke. 
It is the usual remark in such an emergency. I 
gave him the butt ; and, recognizing the fact and 

. my spirit, the trout at once sank to the bottom, 
and sulked. It is the most dangerous mood of a 

^. trout ; for you cannot tell what he will do next. 
We reeled up a little, and waited five minutes for 



A FIGHT WITH A TROUT. 51 

him to reflect. A tightening of the hne enraged 
him, and he soon developed his tactics. Coming 
to the surface, he made straight for the boat 
faster than I could reel in, and evident^ with 
hostile intentions. "Look out for him ! " cried 
Luke as he came flj^ing in the air. I evaded 
him b}^ dropping flat in the bottom of the boat ; 
and, when I picked m}^ traps up, he was spinning 
across the lake as if he had a new idea : but the 
line was still fast. He did not run far. I gave 
him the butt again ; a thing he seemed to hate, 
even as a gift. In a moment the evil-minded 
fish, lashing the water in his rage, was coming 
back again, making straight for the boat as 
before. Luke, who was used to these en- 
counters, having read of them in the writings of 
travellers he had accompanied, raised his paddle 
in self-defence. The trout left the water about 
ten feet from the boat, and came direct^ at me 
with fiery e5^es, his speckled sides flashing like a 
meteor. I dodged as he whisked b}^ with a 
vicious sla]3 of his bifurcated tail, and nearly^^ 
upset the boat. The line was of course slack; 



52 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

and the danger was that he would entangle it 
about me, and carry away a leg. This was evi- 
dently his game ; but I untangled it, and Duly 
lost a breast-button or two by the swiftly-moving 
string. The trout i)lunged into the water with a 
hissing sound, and went away again with all the 
line on the reel. More butt ; more indignation 
on the part of the captive. The contest had now 
been going on for half an hour, and I was get- 
ting exhausted. We had been back and forth 
across the lake, and round and round the lake. 
What I feared was, that the trout would start up 
the inlet, and wreck us in the bushes. But he 
had a new fancy, and began the execution of a 
mancBuvre which I had never read of. Instead 
of coming straight towards me, he took a large 
circle, swimming rapidly, and gradually contract- 
ing his orbit. I reeled in, and kept my e3^e on 
him. Round and round he went, narrowing his 
circle. I began to suspect the game ; which was, 
to twist my head off. When he had reduced the 
radius of his circle to about twenty-five feet, he 
struck a tremendous pace through the water. It 



A FIGHT WITH A TROUT. 53 

would be false modestj^ in a sportsman to say- 
that I was not equal to the occasion. Instead of 
tui-ning round with him, as he expected, I stepped 
to the bow, braced mj'self, and let the boat 
swing. Round went the fish, and round we went 
like a top. I saw a line of Mount Marc3^s all 
round the horizon ; the rosy tint in the west 
made a broad band of -pink along the sky above 
the tree-tops ; the evening star was a perfect 
circle of light, a hoop of gold in the heavens. 
We whirled and reeled, and reeled and whirled. 
I was willing to give the mahcious beast butt and 
line, and all, if he would only go the other way 
for a change. 

When I came to myself, Luke was gaffing the 
trout at the boat-side. After we had got him in, 
and dressed him, he weighed three-quarters of a 
pound. Fish alwaj^s lose b}^ being " got in and 
dressed." It is best to weigh them while they 
are in the water. The onty really large one I 
ev ir caught got away witli my leader when I first 
struck him. He weighed ten pounds. 



IV. 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEEK. 




F civilization owes a debt of gratitude to 
the self-sacrificing sportsmen who have 
cleared the Adirondack regions of cata- 
mounts and savage trout, what shall be said of 
the army which has so nobly reheved them of the 
terror of the deer ? The deer-slayers have some- 
what celebrated their exploits in print ; but I 
think that justice has never been done them. 

The American deer in the wilderness, left to 
himself, leads a comparatiA^ely harmless but 
rather stupid hfe, with only such excitement as 
his own timid fancy raises. It was very seldom 
that one of his tribe was e..ten by the North- 
American tiger. For a wild animal he is very 
domestic, simple in his tastes, regular in his 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 55 

habits, affectionate in his family. Unfortunately 
for his repose, his haunch is as tender as his 
heart. Of all wild creatures he is one of the most 
graceful in action, and he poses with the skill 
of an experienced model. I have seen the goats 
on Mount Pentelicus scatter at the approach of 
a stranger, climb to the sharp points of pro- 
jecting rocks, and attitudinize in the most self- 
conscious manner, striking at once those pictur- 
esque postures against the sky with which Oriental 
pictures have made us and them familiar. But 
the whole proceeding was theatrical. Greece is 
the home of art, and it is rare to find any thing 
there natural and unstudied. I presume that 
these goats have no nonsense about them when 
the}^ are alone with the goat-herds, any more than 
the goat-herds have, except when they come to 
pose in the studio ; but the long ages of culture, 
the presence alwa3's to the qjq of the best models 
and the forms of immortal beaut}^, the heroic 
friezes of the Temple of Theseus, the marble pro- 
cessions of sacrificial animals, have had a steady 
moulding, educating influence equal to a society 



56 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

of decorative art upon the peoj)le and the animals 
who have dwelt in this artistic atmosphere. The 
Attic goat has become an artificially artistic 
being ; though of course he is not now what he 
was, as a poser, in the days of Polycletus. There 
is opportunity for a Yerj instructive essay by Mr. 
E. A. Freeman on the decadence of the Attic 
goat under the influence of the Ottoman Turk. 

The American deer, in the free atmosphere of 
our countr}^, and as yet untouched by our deco- 
rative art, is without self-consciousness, and all 
his attitudes are free and unstudied. The favor- 
ite position of the deer — his fore-feet in the 
shallow margin of the lake, among the lily-pads, 
his antlers thrown back and his nose in the air at 
the moment he hears the stealth}^ breaking of a 
twig in the forest — is still spirited and graceful, 
and wholly unaffected ])y the pictures of him 
which the artists have put upon canvas. 
* Wherever you go in the Northern forest, you 
will find deer-paths. So plainly marked and 
well-trodden are the3^, that it is easy to mistake 
them for trails made by hunters ; but he who 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 57 

follows one of them is soon in difficulties. He 
may find himself climbing through cedar- thickets 
an almost inaccessible cliff, or immersed in the 
intricacies of a marsh. The "run," in one di- 
rection, will lead to water ; but, in the other, it 
climbs the highest hills, to which the deer retires, 
for safety and repose, in impenetrable thickets. 
The hunters, in winter, find them congregated in 
" 3'ards," where they can be surrounded and shot 
as easily as our troops shoot Comanche women 
and children in their winter villages. These 
little paths are full of pit-falls among the roots 
and stones ; and, nimble as the deer is, he some- 
times breaks one of his slender legs in them. 
Yet he knows how to treat himself without a 
surgeon. I knew of a tame deer in a settlement 
in the edge of the forest who had the misfortune 
to break her leg. She immediately disappeared 
with a delicacy rare in an invalid, and was not 
seen for two weeks. Her friends had given her 
up, supx^osing that she had dragged herself away 
into the depths of the woods, and died of starva- 
tion ; when one day she returned, cured of 



58 IN TEE WILDERNESS. 

lameness, but thin as a virgin shadow. She had 
the sense to shun the doctor ; to he down in some 
safe place, and patiently wait for her leg to heal. 
I have observed in many of the more refined 
animals this sort of shyness, and reluctance to 
give trouble, which excite our admiration when 
noticed in mankind. 

The deer is called a timid animal, and taunted 
with possessing courage only when he is " at 
bay ; ' ' the stag will fight when he can no longer 
flee ; and the doe will' defend her young in the 
face of murderous enemies. The deer gets httle 
credit for this eleventh-hour bravery. But I 
think, that, in any truly Christian condition of 
societ}", the deer would not be conspicuous for 
cowardice. I suppose that if the American girl, 
even as she is described in foreign romances, 
were pursued by bull-dogs, and fired at from 
behind fences every time she ventured out- 
doors, she would become timid, and reluctant to 
go abroad. When that golden era comes which 
the poets thinli is behind us, and the prophets de- 
clai'e is about to be ushered in by the opening of 



A-IIUNTmO OF THE DEER. 59 

the ' ' vials, ' ' and the killing of eveiybody who does 
not believe as those nations believe which have 
the most cannon ; when we all live in real con- 
cord, — perhaps the gentle-hearted deer will be 
respected, and will find that men are not more 
savage to the weak than are the cougars and 
panthers. If the little spotted fawn can think, 
it must seem to her a queer world in which the 
advent of innocence is hailed by the baling of 
fierce hounds and the " ping " of the rifle. 

Hunting the deer in the Adiroudacks is con- 
ducted in the most manly fashion. ^ There are 
several methods, and in none of them is a fair 
chance to the deer considered. A favorite meth- 
od with the natives is j)ractised in winter, and 
is called by them " still hunting." My idea of 
still hunting is for one man to go alone into the 
forest, look about for a deer, put his wits fairly 
against the wits of the keen-scented animal, and 
kill his deer, or get lost in the attempt. There 
seems to be a sort of fairness about this. It is 
private assassination, tempered with a little un- 
certainty about finding j^our man. The still hunt- 



60 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

ing of the natives has all the romance and clanger 
attending the slaughter of sheep in an abattoir. 
As the snow gets deep, many deer congregate 
in the depths of the forest, and keep a place 
trodden down, which grows larger as they 
tramp down the snow in search of food. In 
time this refuge becomes a sort of "yard," 
surrounded by unbroken snow-banks. The hunt- 
ers then make their way to this retreat on snow- 
shoes, and from the top of the banks pick off 
the deer at leisure with their rifles, and haul 
them away to market, until the enclosure is pretty 
much emptied. This is one of the surest methods 
of exterminating the deer ; it is also one of the 
most merciful ; and, being the plan adopted by 
our government for civilizing the Indian, it ought 
to be popular. The only people who object to it 
are the summer sportsmen. They naturall}^ want 
some pleasure out of the death of the deer. 

Some of our best sportsmen, who desire to 
protract the pleasure of slaying deer through as 
many seasons as possible, object to the practice 
of the hunters, who make it their chief business 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER, 61 

to slaughter as many deer in a camping-season as 
they can. Their own rule, they say, is to kill a 
deer only when they need venison to eat. Their 
excuse is specious. What right have these soph- 
ists to put themselves into a desert place, out 
of the reach of provisions, and then ground a 
right to slay deer on their own improvidence? 
If it is necessary for these people to have any 
thing to eat, which I doubt, it is not necessary 
that they should have the luxur}^ of venison. 

One of the most picturesque methods of hunt- 
ing the poor deer is called "floating." The 
person, with murder in his heart, chooses a 
cloudy night, seats himself, rifle in hand, in a 
canoe, which is noiselessly paddled by the guide, 
and explores the shore of the lake or the dark 
inlet. In the bow of the boat is a light in a 
"jack," the rays of which are shielded from the 
boat and its occupants. A deer comes down to 
feed upon the hlj^-pads. The boat approaches 
him. He looks up, and stands a moment, terri- 
fied or fascinated by the bright flames. In that 
moment the sportsman is supposed to shoot the 



62 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

deer. As an Mstorical fact, Ms hand usually 
shakes, so that he misses the animal, or only 
wounds him ; and the stag limps away to die 
after days of suffering. Usually, however, the 
hunters remain out all night, get stiff from cold 
and the cramped position in the boat, and, when 
they return in the morning to camp, cloud their 
future existence by the assertion that they " heard 
a big buck" moving along the shore, but the 
people in camp made so much noise that he was 
frightened off. 

By all odds, the favorite and prevalent mode 
is hunting with dogs. The dogs do the hunting, 
the men the killing. The hounds are sent into 
the forest to rouse the deer, and drive him from 
his cover. They climb the mountains, strike the 
trails, and go baying and yelping on the track 
of the poor beast. The deer have their estab- 
lished run- ways, as I said; and, when they are 
(disturbed in their retreat, they are certain to 
attempt to escape by following one which in- 
variably leads to some lake or stream. All that 
the hunter has to do is to seat himself by one of 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 63 

these run-ways, or sit in a boat on the lake, and 
wait the coming of the pursued deer. The 
frightened beast, fleeing from the unreasoning 
brutahty of the hounds, will often seek the open 
country, with a mistaken confidence in the hu- 
manity of man. To kill a deer when he suddenly 
passes one on a run-waj^ demands presence of 
mind, and quickness of aim : to shoot him from 
the boat, after he has plunged panting into the 
lake, requires the rare ability to hit a moving 
object the size of a deer's head a few rods dis- 
tant. Either exploit is sufficient to make a hero 
of a common man. To paddle up to the swim- 
ming deer, and cut his throat, is a sure means 
of getting A^enison, and has its charms for some. 
Even women, and doctors of divinity, have en- 
joj^ed this exquisite pleasure. It cannot be denied 
that we are so constituted by a wise Creator as to 
feel a dehght in killing a wild animal which we 
do not experience in killing a tame one. 

The pleasurable excitement of a deer-hunt has 
never, I believe, been regarded from the deer's 
point of view. I happen to be in a position. 



64 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

by reason of a lucky Adirondack experience, to 
present it in that light. I am sorry if this intro- 
duction to my little story has seemed long to the 
reader : it is too late now to skip it ; but he can 
recoup himself by omitting the story. 

Early on the morning of the 23d of August, 
1877, a doe was feeding on Basin Mountain. 
The night had been warm and shower}^, and the 
morning opened in an undecided way. The 
wind was southerly : it is what the deer call a 
dog- wind, having come to know quite well the 
meaning of "a southerly wind and a cloud}^ 
sky." The sole companion of the doe was her 
only child, a charming little fawn, whose brown 
coat was just beginning to be mottled with the 
beautiful spots which make this j^oung creature 
as lovely as the gazelle. The buck, its father, 
had been that night on a long tramp across the 
mountain to Clear Pond, and had not j^t re- 
turned : he went ostensibly to feed on the suc- 
culent lily-pads there. " He feedeth among the 
lilies until the day break and the shadows flee 
away, and he should be here by this hour ; but 



A-IIUNTING OF THE DEER. 65 

he Cometh not," she said, "leaping upon the 
mountains , skipping upon the hills . ' ' Clear Pond 
was too far off for the 3^oung mother to go with 
her fawn for a night's pleasure. It was a fashion- 
able watering-place at this season among the 
deer ; and the doe maj have remembered, not 
without uneasiness, the moonlight meetings of a 
frivolous society there. But the buck did not 
come : he was very likely sleeping under one of 
the ledges on Tight Mppin. Was he alone? " I 
chai-ge you, b}' the roes and by the hinds of the 
field, that ye stir not nor awake my love till he 
please." 

The doe was feeding, daintily cropping the 
tender leaves of the young shoots, and turning 
from time to time to regard her offspring. The 
fawn had taken his morning meal, and now lay 
curled up on a bed of moss, watching contented- 
ly, with his large, soft brown eyes, every move- 
ment of his mother. The great eyes followed 
her with an alert entreaty ; and, if the mother 
stepped a pace or two farther away in feeding, 
the fawn made a half-movement 3 as if to rise and 



66 IN THE WILDEBNESS. 

follow her. You see, she was his sole depend- 
ence in all the world. But he was quickl}^ re-as- 
sured when she turned her gaze on him ; and if, 
in alarm, he uttered a plaintive cry, she bounded 
to him at once, and, with every demonstration of 
affection, Hcked his mottled skin till it shone 
again. 

It was a pretty picture, — maternal love on the 
one part, and happj' trust on the other. The 
doe was a beauty, and would have been so con- 
sidered anywhere, as graceful and winning a 
creature as the sun that day shone on, — slender 
Hmbs, not too heavy flanlvs, round bod}^, and 
aristocratic head, with small ears, and luminous, 
intelligent, affectionate ej'es. How alert, supple, 
free, she was ! What untaught grace in every 
movement ! What a charming pose when she 
lifted her head, and turned it to regard her child ! 
You would have had a companion-picture, if you 
had seen, as I saw that morning, a baby kicking 
about among the dry pine-needles on a ledge 
above the Ausable, in the valley below, while its 
young mother sat near, with an easel before her, 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 67 

touching in the color of a reluctant landscape, 
giving a quick look at the sky and the outline of 
the Twin Mountains, and bestowing every third 
glance upon the laughing boj^, — art in its in- 
fancy. 

The doe lifted her head a httle with a quick 
motion, and turned her ear to the south. Had 
she heard something ? Probabty it was only the 
south wind in the balsams. There was silence 
all about in the forest. If the doe had heard 
any thing, it was one of the distant noises of the 
world. There are in the woods occasional moan- 
ings, premonitions of change, which are inaudi- 
ble to the dull ears of men, but which, I have no 
doubt, the forest-folk hear and understand. If 
the doe's suspicions were excited for an instant, 
they were gone as soon. With an affectionate 
glance at her fawn, she continued picking up her 
breakfast. 

But suddenly she started, head erect, eyes 
dilated, a tremor in her limbs. She took a step ; 
she turned her head to the south ; she listened 
intently. There was a sound, — a distant, pro- 



IN THE WILDERNESS. 



longed note, bell-toned, pervading the woods, shak- 
ing the air in smooth vibrations. It was repeated . 
The doe had no doubt now. She shook like the 
sensitive mimosa when a footstep approaches. 
It was the baying of a hound ! It was far off, — 
at the foot of the mountain. Time enougli to 
fl}^ ; time enough to put miles between her and 
the hound, before he should come upon her fresh 
trail ; time enough to escape awa}^ through the 
dense forest, and hide in the recesses of Panther 
Gorge ; 3'es, time enough. But there was the 
fawn. The cry of the hound was repeated, more 
distinct this time. The mother instinctivel}^ 
bounded away a few paces. The fawn started 
up with an anxious bleat : the doe turned ; she 
came back ; she couldn't leave it. She bent over 
it, and licked it, and seemed to sa}-, " Come, 
my child : we are pursued: we must go." She 
walked awa}' towards the west, and the little 
thing skipped after her. It was slow going for 
the slender legs, over the fallen logs, and through 
the rasping bushes. The doe bounded in ad- 
vance, and waited : the fawn scrambled after her, 



A-IIUNTING OF THE DEER. 69 

slipping and tumbling along, veiy groggy 3'et on 
its legs, and whining a good deal because its 
mother kept always moving awa}^ from it. The 
fawn evidently did not hear the hound : the little 
innocent would even have looked sweetly at 
the dog, and tried to make friends with it, if the 
brute had been rushing upon him. By all the 
means at her command the doe urged her 3^oung 
one on ; but it was slow work. She might haA^e 
been a mile away v/hile they were making a few 
rods. Whenever the fawn caught up, he was 
quite content to frisk about. He wanted more 
breakfast, for one thing ; and his mother wouldn't 
standstill. She moved on continually; and his 
wxak legs were tangled in the roots of the narrow 
deer-path. 

Shortly came a sound that threw the doe into 
a panic of terror, — a short, sharp 3'elp, followed 
b}' a prolonged howl, caught up and re-echoed by 
other hayings along the mountain- side. The doe 
knew what that meant. One hound had caught 
her trail, and the whole pack responded to the 
" view- halloo." The danger was certain now: 



70 IN TEE WILDERNESS. 

it was near. She could not crawl on in this 
way : the dogs would soon be upon them. She 
turned again for flight : the fawn, scrambling 
after her, tumbled over, and bleated piteously. 
The baying, emphasized now by the j^elp of cer- 
tainty, came nearer. Flight with the fawn was 
impossible. The doe returned and stood by it, 
head erect, and nostrils distended. She stood 
IDcrfectly still, but trembling. Perhaps she was 
thinking. The fawn took advantage of the situa- 
tion, and began to draw his luncheon ration. 
The doe seemed to have made up her mind. She 
let him finish. The fawn, having taken all he 
wanted, la^^ down contentedly, and the doe licked 
Mm for a moment. Then, with the swiftness of 
a bird, she dashed awa}^, and in a moment was 
lost in the forest. She went in the direction of 
the hounds. 

According to all human calculations, she was 
going into the jaws of death. So she was : all 
human calculations are selfish. She kept straight 
on, hearing the bapng everj^ moment more dis- 
tinctly. She descended the slope of the moun- 



A-HUNTING OF THE BEER. 71 

tain until she reached the more open forest of 
hard-wood. It was freer going here, and the 
cry of the pack echoed more resoundingly in the 
great spaces. She was going due east, when 
(judging by the sound, the hounds were not far 
off, though they were still hidden b}' a ridge) she 
turned short away to the north, and kept on at a 
good pace. In five minutes more she heard the 
sharp, exultant yelp of disco ver}', and then the 
deep-mouthed howl of pursuit. The hounds had 
struck her trail where she turned, and the fawn 
was safe. 

The doe was in good running condition, the 
ground was not bad, and she felt the exhilaration 
of the chase. For the moment, fear left her, and 
she bounded on with the exaltation of triumph. 
For a quarter of an hour she went on at a slap- 
ping pace, clearing the moose-bushes with bound 
after bound, fl3'ing over the fallen logs, pausing 
neither for brook nor ra\4ne. The baying of the 
hounds grew fainter behind her. But she struck 
a bad piece of going, a dead-wood slash. It was 
marvellous to see her skim over it, leaping among 



72 m THE WILDERNESS. 

its intricacies, and not breaking her slender logs. 
No other living animal could do it. But it was 
kilhng work. She began to pant fearfuU}^ ; she 
lost ground. The baling of the hounds was near- 
er. She climbed the hard-wood hill at a slower 
gait ; but, once on more level, free ground, her 
breath came back to her, and she stretched awaj^ 
with new courage, and maj^be a sort of contempt 
of her heavy pursuers. 

After running at high speed perhaps half a mile 
farther, it occurred to her that it would be safe 
now to turn to the west, and, by a vv^ide circuit, 
seek her fawn. But, at the moment, she heaixl a 
sound that chilled her heart. It was the cry of 
a hound to the west of her. The crafty brute 
had made the circuit of the slash, and cut off her 
retreat. There was nothing to do but to keep 
on ; and on she went, still to the north, with the 
noise of the i^ack behind her. In five minutes 
more she had passed into a hillside clearing. 
Cows and young steers were grazing there. She 
heard a tinkle of bells. Below her, down tlie 
mountain-slope, were other clearings, broken by 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 73 

patches of woods. Fences intervened ; and a mile 
or two down lay the valle^^, the shining Ausable, 
and the peaceful farm-houses. That way also her 
hereditary enemies were. Not a merciful heart 
in all that lovely valle}^ She hesitated : it was 
only for an instant. She must cross the Shde- 
brook Yalley if possible, and gain the mountain 
opposite. She bounded on ; she stopped. What 
was that? From the valle}' ahead came the cry 
of a searching hound. All the devils were loose 
this morning. Ever}' wa}' was closed but one, 
and that led straight down the mountain to the 
cluster of houses. Conspicuous among them was 
a slender white wooden spire. The doe did not 
know that it was the spire of a Christian chapel. 
But perhaps she thought that human pity dwelt 
there, and would be more merciful than the teeth 
of the hounds. 

" The hounds are baying on my track: 
O white man ! will you send me back ? " 

In a panic, frightened animals will always flee 
to himian-kind from the danger of more savage 



74 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

foes. They alwa^'s make a mistake in doing so. 
Perhaps the trait is the survival of an era of 
peace on earth ; perhaps it is a prophecy of the 
golden age of the future. The business of this 
age is murder, — the slaughter of animals, the 
slaughter of fellow-men, by the wholesale. Hila- 
rious poets who have never fired a gun write 
hunting-songs, — Ti-ra-la : and good bishops 
write war-songs, — Ave the Czar! 

The hunted doe went down the " open," clear- 
ing the fences splendidl}- , flying along the stony 
path. It was a beautiful sight. But consider 
what a shot it was ! If the deer, now, could only 
have been caught ! No doubt there were tender- 
hearted people in the valley who would have 
spared her life, shut her up in a stable, and 
petted her. Was there one who would have let 
her go back to her waiting fawn ? It is the busi- 
ness of civilization to tame or kill. 

The doe went on. She left the saw-mill on 
John's Brook to her right ; she turned into a 
wood-path. As she approached Slide Brook, she 
saw a boy standing by a tree with a raised rifle. 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 75 

The dogs were not in sight ; but she could hear 
them coming down the hill. There was no time 
for hesitation. With a tremendous burst of speed 
she cleared the stream, and, as she touched the 
bank, heard the " ping'' of a rifle-bullet in the 
air above her. The cruel sound gave wings to 
the poor thing. In a moment more she was in 
the opening : she leaped into the travelled road. 
Which way ? Below her in the wood was a load 
of hay : a man and a boy, with pitchforks in their 
hands, were running towards her. She turned 
south, and flew along the street. The town was 
up. Women and children ran to the doors and 
windows ; men snatched their rifles ; shots were 
fired ; at the big boarding-houses, the summer 
boarders, who never have any thing to do, came 
out and cheered ; a camp-stool was thrown from 
a veranda. Some 3'oung fellows shooting at a 
mark in the meadow saw the flying deer, and 
popped away at her ; but they were accustomed 
to a mark that stood still. It was, all so sudden ! 
There were twenty people wlio were just going 
to shoot her ; when the doe leaped the road 



76 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

fence, and went away across a marsh toward the 
foot-hills. It was a fearful gantlet to run. But 
nobody 0?s:cept the deer considered it in that light. 
Everj'body told what he was just going to do ; 
everybod}^ w^ho had seen the performance was a 
kind of hero, — everybody except the deer. For 
days and daj's it was the subject of conversa- 
tion ; and the summer boarders kept their gans 
at hand, expecting another deer would come to 
be shot at. 

. The doe went away to the foot-hills, going now 
slower, and evidently fatigued, if not frightened 
half to death. Nothing is so appalling to a re- 
cluse as half a mile of summer boarders. As 
the deer entered the thin woods, she saw a rabble 
of people start across the meadow in pursuit. By 
this time, the dogs, panting, and lolling out their 
tongues, came swinging along, keeping the trail, 
like stupids, and consequentl}^ losing ground when 
the deer doubled. But, when the doe had got into 
the timber, she heard the savage brutes howling 
across the meadow. (It is well enough, perhaps, 
to sa}^ that nobody offered to shoot tJie dogs.) 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 11 

The courage of the panting fugitive was not 
gone : she was game to the tip of her high-bred 
ears. But the fearful pace at which she had just 
been going told on her. Her legs trembled, and 
her heart beat like a trip-hammer. She slowed 
her speed perforce, but still fled industriously^ up 
the right bank of the stream. When sh« had 
gone a couple of miles, and the dogs were evi- 
dentl}' gaining again, she crossed the broad, deep 
brook, climbed the steep left bank, and fled on in 
the direction of the Mount-Marcy trail. The 
fording of the river threw the hounds off for a 
time. She knew, by their uncertain yelping up 
and down the opposite bank, that she had a Uttle 
respite ; she used it, however, to push on until 
the baying was faint in her ears ; and then she 
dropped, exhausted, upon the ground. 

This rest, brief as it was, saved her life. 
Roused again b}" the baying pack, she leaped for- 
ward with better speed, though without that keen 
feeling of exhilarating flight that she had in the 
morning. It was still a race for life ; but the odds 
were in her favor, she thought. She did not ap- 



IN THE WILDERNESS. 



predate the dogged persistence of the hounds, nor 
had an}^ inspiration told her that the race is not to 
the swift. She was a httle confused in her mind 
where to go ; but an instinct kept her course 
to the left, and consequently farther away from 
her fawn. Going now slower, and now faster, as 
the pursuit seemed more distant or nearer, she 
kept to the south-west, crossed the stream again, 
left Panther Gorge on her right, and ran on by 
Haj'Stack and Sk3'light in the direction of the 
Upper Ausable Pond. I do not know her exact 
course through this maze of mountains, swamps, 
ravines, and frightful wildernesses. I only know 
that the poor thing worked her way along pain- 
full}^, with sinking heart and unsteady limbs, 
lying down " dead beat" at intervals, and then 
spurred on by the cry of the remorseless dogs, 
until, late in the afternoon, she staggered down 
the shoulder of Bartlett, and stood upon the shore 
of the lake. If she could put that piece of water 
between her and her pursuers, she would be safe. 
Had she strength to swim it ? 

At her first step into the water she saw a sight 



A-HUNTING OF THE LEER. 79 

that sent her back with a bound. There was a 
boat mid-lake : two men were in it. One was 
rowing : the other had a gun in his hand. They 
were looking towards her : they had seen her. 
(She did not know that they had heard the ba}^- 
ing of hounds on the mountains, and had been 
lying in wait for her an hour.) What should she 
do ? The hounds were drawing near. No escape 
that way, even if she could still run. With oiAy 
a moment's hesitation she plunged into the lake, 
and struck obliquely across. Her tired legs could 
not propel the tired body rapidly. She saw the 
boat headed for her. She turned toward the cen- 
tre of the lake. The boat turned. She could 
hear the rattle of the oar-locks. It was gaining 
on her. Then there was a silence. Then there 
was a splash of the water just ahead of her, fol- 
lowed by a roar round the lake, the words " Con- 
found it all!" and a rattle of the oars again. 
The doe saw the boat nearing her. She turned 
irresolutely to the shore whence she came : the 
dogs were lapping the water, and howling there. 
She turned again to the centre of the lake. 



80 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

The brave, prett}' creature was quite exhausted 
now. In a moment more, with a rush of water, 
the boat was on her, and the man at the oars had 
leaned over and caught her b}^ the tail. 

" Knock her on the head with that paddle ! " 
he shouted to the gentleman in the stern. 

The gentleman was a gentleman, with a kind, 
smooth-shaven face, and might have been a min- 
ister of some sort of everlasting gospel. He 
took the paddle in his hand. Just then the doe 
turned her head, and looked at him with her 
great, appealing ej^es. 

" I can't do it ! my soul, I can't do it ! " and 
he dropped the paddle. "Oh, let her go ! " 

"Let H. go ! " was the only response of the 
guide as he slung the deer round, whipped out 
his hunting-knife, and made a pass that severed 
her jugular. 

And the gentleman ate that night of the veni- 

The buck returned about the middle of the 
afternoon. The fawn was bleating piteously, 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 81 

luingiy and lonesome. The buck was siu'prised. 
He looked about in the forest. He took a circuit, 
and came back. His doe was nowhere to be 
seen. He looked down at the fawn in a helpless 
sort of waj'. The fawn appealed for his supper. 
The buck had nothing whatever to give his child, 
— nothing but his S3^mpath3\ If he said any 
thing, this is what he said : " I'm the head of this 
family ; but, really, this is a novel case. I've noth- 
ing whatever for 3'ou. I don't know what to do. 
I've the feelings of a father ; but 3'ou can't live 
on them. Let us travel." 

The buck walked away : the little one toddled 
after him. They disappeared in the forest. 




A CHARACTER STUDY. 




HERE has been a lively inquiry after 
the primeval man. Wanted, a man 
who would satisfy the conditions of the 
miocene environment, and jxt would be good 
enough for an ancestor. We are not particular 
about our ancestors, if they are sufficientfy re- 
mote ; but we must have something. Faihng to 
apprehend the primeval man, science has sought 
the primitive man where he exists as a survival 
in present savage races. He is, at best, only a 
mushroom growth of the recent period (came in, 
probabfy, with the general raft of mammalian 
fauna) ; but he possesses yet some rudimentary 
traits that may be studied. 

It is a good mental exercise to try to fix the 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 83 

mind on the primitive man divested of all the 
attributes he has acquired in his struggles with 
the other mammalian fauna. Fix the mind on 
an orange, the ordinar}^ occupation of the meta- 
ph3^sician : take from it (without eating it) odor, 
color, weight, form, substance, and peel; then 
let the mind still dwell on it as an orange. The 
experiment is perfectl}^ successful ; onl}^, at the 
end of it, jou haven't any mind. Better still, 
consider the telephone : take away from it the 
metallic disk, and the magnetized iron, and the. 
connecting wire, and then let the mind run 
abroad on the telephone. The mind won't come 
back. I have tried bj^ this sort of process to get 
a conception of the primitive man. I let the 
mind roarii away back over the vast geologic 
spaces, and sometimes fancy I see a dim image 
of him stalking across the terrace epoch of the 
quaternary period. 

But this is an unsatisf3ing, pleasure. The best 
results are obtained by studying the primitive 
man as he is left here and there in our era, a 
witness of what has been ; and I find him most 



84 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

to my mind in the Adirondack system, of what 
geologists call the Champlain epoch. I suppose 
the primitive man is one who owes more to 
nature than to the forces of civilization. What 
we seek in him are the primal and original traits, 
unmixed with the sophistications of societ}- , and 
unimpaired by the refinements of an artificial 
culture. He would retain the primitive instincts, 
which are cultivated out of the ordinar}^, com- 
monplace man. I should expect to find him, by 
reason of an unrelinquished kinship, enjojdng a 
special communion with nature, — admitted to 
its mj'steries, understanding its moods, and able 
to predict its vagaries. He would be a kind of 
test to us of what we have lost by our gregarious 
acquisitions. On the one hand, there would be 
the sharpness of the senses, the keen instiiicts 
Cwhich the fox and the beaver still possess) , the 
ability to find one's wa}^ in the pathless forest, to 
follow a trail, to circumvent the wild denizens of 
the woods ; and, on the other hand, there would 
be the philosophy of life which the primitive 
man, with little external aid, would evolve from 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 85 

original observation and cogitation. It is onr 
good fortune to know such a man ; but it is diffi- 
cult to present him to a scientific and cavilhng 
generation. He emigrated from somewhat limited 
conditions in Vermont, at an early age, nearly 
half a century ago, and sought freedom for his 
natural development backward in the wilds of the 
Adirondacks. Sometimes it is a love of adven- 
ture and freedom that sends men out of the more 
civihzed conditions into the less ; sometimes it is 
a constitutional phj'sical lassitude which leads 
them to prefer the rod to the hoe, the trap to the 
sickle, and the society of bears to town-meetings 
and taxes. I thiiilv that Old Mountain Phelps 
had merely the instincts of the primitive man, 
and never any hostile civilizing intent as to the 
wilderness into which he plunged. Yv'hy should 
he want to slash away the forest, and iilough up 
the ancient mould, when it is infinitely pleasanter 
to roam about in the leafj^ solitudes, or sit upon a 
mossy log and listen to the chatter of birds and 
the stir of beasts? Are there not trout in the 
streams, gum exuding from the spruce, sugar in 



SQ IN THE WILDE RNES8. 

the maples, honey in the hollow trees, fur on the 
sables, warmth in hickory-logs? Will not a few 
days' planting and scratching in the "open" 
yield potatoes and rye ? And, if there is steadier 
diet needed than venison and bear, is the pig an 
expensive animal ? If Old Phelps bowed to the 
prejudice or fashion of his age (since we have 
come out of the tertiary state of things), and 
reared a family, built a frame-house in a secluded 
nook by a cold spring, j)lanted about it some 
apple-trees and a rudimentary garden, and in- 
stalled a group of flaming sunflowers by the door, 
I am comdnced that it was a concession that did 
not touch his radical character ; that is to say, it 
did not impair his reluctance to split oven-wood. 
He was a true citizen of the wilderness. 
Thoreau would have liked him, as he liked In- 
dians and woodchucks, and the smell of pine- 
forests ; and, if Old Phelps had seen Thoreau, 
he would probably have said to him, " Wh}^ on 
airth, Mr. Thoreau, don't you live accordin' to 
your preachin' ? ' ' You might be misled by the 
shaggy suggestion of Old Phelps's given name — 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 87 

Orson — into the notion that he was a mighty 
hunter, with the fierce spirit of the Berserkers in 
his veins. Nothing could be farther from the 
truth. The hirsute and grisly sound of Orson 
expresses onl}^ his entire affinity with the untamed 
and the natural, an uncouth but gentle passion 
for the freedom and wildness of the forest. Or- 
son Phelps has only those unconventional and 
humorous quahties of the bear which make the 
animal so beloved in literature ; and one does not 
think of Old Phelps so much as a lover of natm-e, 
— to use the sentimental slang of the period, — 
as a part of nature itself. 

His appearance at the time when as a "guide" 
he began to come into i3ublic notice fostered 
this impression, — a sturdy figure, with long 
bod}^ and short legs, clad in a woollen shirt and 
butternut- colored trousers repaked to the point 
of ]picturesqueness, his head surmounted by a 
limp, light-brown felt hat, frayed away at the 
top, so that his yellowish hair grew out of it like 
some nameless fern out of a pot. His tawny 
hair was long and tangled, matted now many 



m THE WILDERNESS. 



years past the possibility of being entered by a 
comb. His features were small and delicate, and 
set in the frame of a reddish beard, the razor 
having mowed away a clearing about the sensi- 
tive mouth, which was not seldom wreathed with 
a child-like and charming smile. Out of this 
hirsute environment looked the small gray ej'es, 
set near together ; e3'es keen to observe, and 
quick to express change of thought ; eyes that 
made you believe instinct can grow into philo- 
sophic judgment. His feet and hands were of 
aristocratic smallness, although the latter were 
not worn awa}^ by ablutions ; in fact, they assisted 
his toilet to give 3^ou the impression that here 
was a man who had just come out of the ground, 
— a real son of the soil, whose appearance was 
partial^ explained by his humorous relation to 
soap. "Soap is a thing," he said, "that I 
hain't no kinder use for." His clothes seemed 
to, have been put on him once for all, lilve the 
Dark of a tree, a long time ago. The observant 
stranger was sure to be puzzled by the contrast 
of this realistic and uncouth exterior with the 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 89 

internal fineness, amounting to refinement and 
culture, that shone through it all. What com- 
munion had supplied the place of our artificial 
breeding to this man ? 

Perhaps his most characteristic attitude was 
sitting on a log, with a short pipe in his mouth. 
If ever man was formed to sit on a log, it was 
Old Phelps. He was essentially a contemplative 
person. Walking on a country road, or any- 
where in the " open," was irksome to him. Pie 
had a shambling, loose-jointed gait, not unhke 
that of the bear : his short legs bowed out, as if 
the}" had been more in the habit of chmbing trees 
than of walking. On land, if we may use that 
expression, he was something like a sailor ; but, 
once in the rugged trail or the unmarked route 
of his native forest, he was a different person, 
and few pedestrians could compete with him. 
The vulgar estimate of his contemporaries, that 
reckoned Old Phelps "lazj^," was simply a fail- 
ure to comprehend the conditions of his being. 
It is the unjustness of civilization that it sets up 
uniform and artificial standards for all j)ersons. 



90 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

The primitive man suffers by them much as the 
contemplative philosopher does, when one hap- 
pens to arrive in this bus}^, fussy world. 

If the appearance of Old Phelps attracts at- 
tention, his voice, when first heard, invariably 
startles the listener. A small, high-pitched, half- 
querulous voice, it easil}' rises into the shrillest 
falsetto ; and it has a quality in it that makes it 
audible in all the tempests of the forest, or the 
roar of rapids, like the piping of a boatswain's 
whistle at sea in a gale. He has a way of letting 
it rise as his sentence goes on, or when he is 
opposed in argument, or wishes to mount above 
other voices in the conversation, until it dominates 
everything. Heard in the depths of the woods, 
quavering aloft, it is felt to be as much a part of 
nature, an original force, as the north-west wind 
or the scream of the hen-hawk. When he is pot- 
tering about the camp-fire, trpng to light his pipe 
with a twig held in the flame, he is apt to begin 
some philosophical observation in a small, slow, 
stumbling voice, which seems about to end in 
defeat ; when he puts on some unsuspected force, 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 91 

and the sentence ends in an insistent shriek. 
Plorace Greeley had such a voice, and could regu- 
late it in the same manner. But Phelps's voice is 
not seldom plaintive, as if touched by the dreamy 
sadness of the woods themselves. 

When Old Mountain Phelps was discovered, he 
was, as the reader has already guessed, not un- 
derstood by his contemporaries. His neighbors, 
farmers in the secluded valle^^, had many of them 
grown thrifty and prosperous, cultivating the fer- 
tile meadows, and vigorousl}^ attacking the tim- 
bered mountains ; while Phelps, with not much 
more faculty of acquiriDg property than the roam- 
ing deer, had pursued the even tenor of the hfe 
in the forest on which he set out. They would 
have been surprised to be told that Old Phelps 
owned more of what makes the value of the 
Adirondacks than all of them put together; 
but it was true. This woodsman, this trapper, 
this hunter, this fisherman, this sitter on a log, 
and i^hilosopher, was the real proprietor of the 
region over which he was ready to guide the 
stranger. It is true that he had not a monopoly 



92 m THE WILDERNESS. 

of its geography or its topography (though his 
knowledge was superior in these respects) ; there 
were other trappers, and more deadlj^ hunters, 
and as intrepid guides : but Old Phelps was the 
discoverer of the beauties and sublimities of the 
mountains ; and, when cit}^ strangers broke into 
the region, he monopolized the appreciation of 
these delights and wonders of nature. I suppose, 
that, in all that country, he alone had noticed the 
sunsets, and observed the delightful processes of 
the seasons, taken pleasure in the woods for 
themselves, and climbed mountains solety for the 
sake of the prospect. He alone understood what 
was meant b^^ " scener3\" In the ejxs of his 
neighbors, who did not knov/ that he was a poet 
and a philosopher, I dare say he appeared to be 
a slack provider, a rather shiftless trapper and 
fisherman ; and his passionate love of the forest 
and the mountains, if it was noticed, was ac- 
counted to him for idleness. When the appreci- 
ative tourist arrived, Phelps was ready, as guide, 
to open to him all the wonders of his jDOssessions : 
he, for the first tune, found an outlet for his en- 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 93 

thusiasm, and a response to his own passion. 
It then became known what manner of man this 
was who had grown up here in the companionship 
of forests, mountains, and wild animals ; that 
these scenes had highly developed in him the love 
of beauty, the aesthetic sense, delicacy of appre- 
ciation, refinement of feeling ; and that, in his 
solitary wanderings and musings, the primitive 
man, self-taught, had evolved for himself a phi- 
losophy and a sj'stem of things. And it was a 
sufficient S3'stem, so long as it was not disturbed 
by external scepticism. When the outer world 
came to him, perhaps he had about as much to 
give to it as to receive from it ; probably more, in 
his own estimation ; for there is no conceit like 
that of isolation. 

Phelps loved his mountains. He was the dis- 
coverer of Marcy, and caused the first trail to be 
cut to its summit, so that others could enjoj^ the 
noble views from its round and rocky top. To 
him it was, in noble s^Tumetry and beauty, the 
chief mountain of the globe. To stand on it 
gave him, as he said, " a feeling of heaven up- 



94 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

h'isted-ness." He heard with impatience that 
Mount Washington was a thousand feet higher, 
and he had a child-hke increduht}^ about the sur- 
passing subhmity of the Alps. Praise of any 
other elevation he seemed to consider a slight to 
Mount Marcy, and did not willingly hear it, any 
more than a lover hears the laudation of the 
beauty of another woman than the one he loves. 
When he showed us scenery he loved, it made 
him melancholy to have us speak of scenery else- 
where that was finer. And jQt there was this 
delicacy about him, that he never over-praised 
what he brought us to see, any more than one 
would over-praise a friend of whom he was fond. 
I remember, that when for the first time, after a 
toilsome journey through the forest, the splendors 
of the Lower Ausable Pond broke upon our 
vision, — that low-l3'ing silver lake, imprisoned 
by the precipices which it reflected in its bosom, 
— he made no outAvard response to our burst of 
admiration : only a quiet gleam of the qjq showed 
the pleasure our appreciation gave him. As some 
one said, it was as if his friend had been admired, 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 95 

— a friend about whom he was unwilling to say 
much himself, but well pleased to have others 
praise. 

Thus far, we have considered Old Phelps as 
simpty the product of the Adirondacks ; not so 
much a self-made man (as the doubtful phrase 
has it) as a natural growth amid primal forces. 
But our study is interrupted b}^ another influence, 
which complicates the problem, but increases its 
interest. No scientific observer, so far as we 
know, has ever been able to watch the develop- 
ment of the primitive man, plaj^ed upon and 
fashioned by the hebdomadal iteration of ' ' Gree- 
lej^'s Weekl}^ Tri-bune." Old Phelps educated 
by the woods is a fascinating study ; educated 
by the woods and the Tri-bune, he is a phenome- 
non. No one at this day can reasonably con- 
ceive exactly what this newspaper was to such 
a mountain valley as Keene. If it was not a 
Providence, it was a Bible. It was no doubt 
owing to it that Democrats became as scarce as 
moose in the Adirondacks. But it is not of its 
political aspect that I speak. I suppose that the 



96 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

most cultivated and best informed portion of the 
earth's surface — the Western Reserve of Ohio, 
as free from conceit as it is from a suspicion 
that it lacks any thing — owes its pre-eminence 
solely to this comprehensive journal. It received 
from it ever}^ thing except a collegiate and a classi- 
cal education, — things not to be desired, since 
the}^ interfere with the self-manufacture of man. 
If Greek had been in this curriculum, its best 
known dictum would have been translated, 
"Make thj-self." This journal carried to the 
community that fed on it not only a complete 
education in all departments of human practice 
and theorizing, but the more valuable and satis- 
fying assurance that there was nothing more to 
be gleaned in the universe worth the attention of 
man. This panoplied its readers in completeness. 
Politics, literature, arts, sciences, universal broth- 
erhood and sisterhood, — nothing was omitted ; 
neither the poetry of Tenn^^son, nor the philos- 
ophy of Margaret Fuller ; neither the virtues of 
association, nor of unbolted wheat. The laws 
of political economy and trade were laid down as 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 97 

positively and clearty as the best way to bake 
beans, and the sa\ing truth that the millenninni 
would come, and come onl}^ when every foot of 
the earth was subsoiled. 

I do not say that Orson Phelps was the product 
of nature and the Tri-bune ; but he cannot be 
explained without considering these two factors. 
To him Greeley was the Tri-bune, and the Tri- 
bune was Greelej^ ; and 3^et I think he conceived 
of Horace Greeley as something greater than his 
newspaper, and perhaps capable of producing 
another journal equal to it in another i)art of the 
universe. At any rate, so complete^ did Phelps 
absorb this paper and this personality, that he 
was popular^ known as ' ' Greeley ' ' in the region 
where he lived. Perhaps a fancied resemblance 
of the two men in the popular mind had some- 
thing to do with this transfer of name. There is 
no doubt that Horace Greeley owed his vast in- 
fluence in the country to his genius, nor much 
doubt that he owed his popularity in the rural 
districts to James Gordon Bennett ; that is, to 
the personalit}^ of the man which the ingenious 



98 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

Bennett impressed upon the country. That he 
despised the conventionalities of society, and was 
a sloven in his toilet, was firmly believed ; and 
the belief endeared him to the hearts of the 
people. To them "the old white coat" — an 
antique garment of unrenewed immortality — was 
as much a subject of idolatry as the redingote 
grise to the soldiers of the first Napoleon, who 
had seen it by the camp-fires on the Po and on 
the Bor3^sthenes, and believed that he would come 
again in it to lead them against the enemies of 
France. The Greeley of the popular heart was 
clad as Bennett said he was clad. It was in vain, 
even pathetically in vain, that he published in his 
newspaper the full bill of his fashionable tailor 
(the fact that it was receipted may have excited 
the animosity of some of his contemporaries) to 
show that he wore the best broadcloth, and that 
the folds of his trousers followed the city fashion 
of falling outside his boots. If this revelation 
was believed, it made no sort of impression in 
the country. The rural readers were not to be 
wheedled out of their cherished conception of 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 99 

the personal appearance of the philosopher of 
the Tri-bune. 

That the Tri-bune taught Old Phelps to be 
more Phelps than he would have been without it 
was part of the independence-teaching mission 
of Greeley's paper. The subscribers were, an 
arm}^, in which every man was a general. And 
I am not surprised to find Old Phelps lately rising 
to the audacity of criticising his exemplar. In 
some recentlj^-published observations by Phelps 
upon the philosophy of reading is laid down this 
definition : " If I understand the necessit}^ or 
use of reading, it is to reproduce again what has 
been said or proclaimed before. Ilence letters, 
characters, &c., are arranged in all the perfection 
they possibl}^ can be, to show how certain lan- 
guage has been spoken by the original author. 
Now, to reproduce by reading, the reading should 
be so perfectly lilie the original, that no one 
standing out of sight could tell the reading from 
the first time the language was spoken." 

This is illustrated l)y the highest authority at 
hand : " I have heard as good readers read, and 



100 m THE WILDERNESS. 

as poor readers, as almost any one in this region. 
If I have not heard as manj^, I have had a 
chance to hear nearly the extreme in A^ariet3\ 
Horace Greeley ought to have been a good read- 
er. Certainly but few, if anj^, ever knew every 
word of the Enghsh language at a glance more 
readily than he did, or knew the meaning of 
every mark of punctuation more clearl}" ; but he 
could not read proper. ' But how do jou know ? ' 
sa3's one. From the fact, I heard him in the 
same lecture deliver or produce remarks in his 
own particular waj^, that, if they had been pub- 
lished properl}^ in print, a proper reader would 
have reproduced them again the same way. In 
the midst of those remarks Mr. Greelc}^ took up 
a paper, to reproduce b}^ reading part of a speech 
that some one else had made ; and his reading 
did not sound much more like the man that first 
read or made the speech than the clatter of a 
nail-factor}^ sounds like a well-dehvered speech. 
Now, the fault was not because Mr. Greeley did 
not know how to read as well as almost any man 
that ever lived, if not quite : but in his youth he 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 101 

learned to read wrong ; and, as it is ten times 
harder to unlearn any thing than it is to learn it, 
he, like thousands of others, could never stop to 
unlearn it, but carried it on through his whole 
life." 

Whether a reader would be thanked for repro- 
ducing one of Horace Greelej^'s lectures as he 
delivered it is a question that cannot detain us 
here ; but the teaching that he ought to do so, I 
think, would please Mr. Greeley. 

The first driblets of professional tourists and 
summer boarders who arrived among the Adiron- 
dack Mountains a few years ago found Old 
Phelps the chief and best guide of the region. 
Those who were eager to throw off the usages of 
civilization, and tramp and camp in the wilder- 
ness, could not but be well satisfied with the 
aboriginal appearance of this guide ; and when 
he led off into the woods, axe in hand, and a 
huge canvas sack upon his shoulders, they seemed 
to be following the Wandering Jew. The con- 
tents of this sack would have furnished a modern 
industrial exhibition, — provisions cooked and 



102 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

raw, blankets, maple-sugar, tin-ware, clothing, 
pork, Indian-meal, floar, coffee, tea, &c. Phelps 
was the ideal guide : he knew ever}' foot of the 
pathless forest ; he knew all wood-craft, all the 
signs of the weather, or, what is the same thing, 
how to make a Delphic prediction about it. 
He was fisherman and hunter, and had been the 
comrade of sportsmen and explorers ; and his 
enthusiasm for the beauty and sublimity of the 
region, and for its untamable wildness, amounted 
to a passion. He loved his profession ; and j'et 
it very soon appeared that he exercised it with 
reluctance for those who had neither idealit}^, nor 
love for the woods. Their presence was a profa- 
nation amid the scenery he loved. To guide 
into his private and secret haunts a party that 
had no appreciation of their loveliness disgusted 
him. It was a waste of his time to conduct flip- 
pant young men and giddy ghls who made a 
noisy and irreverent lark of the expedition. And, 
for their part, the}^ did not appreciate the benefit 
of being accompanied by a poet and a philoso- 
pher. They neither understood nor valued his 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 103 

special knowledge and his shrewd observations : 
the}' didn't even hke his shriU voice ; his quaint 
talk bored them. It was true, that, at this 
period, Phelps had lost something of the activity 
of his 3'outh ; and the habit of contemplative sit- 
ting on a log and talking increased with the 
infirmities induced by the hard life of the woods- 
man. Perhaps he would rather talk, either about 
the woods-hfe or the various problems of exist- 
ence, than cut wood, or bus}" himself in the 
drudgerj" of the camp. His critics went so far 
as to sa}', " Old Phelps is a fraud." They would 
have said the same of Socrates. Xantippe, who 
never appreciated the world in which Socrates 
lived, thought he was lazy. Probably Socrates 
could cook no better than Old Phelps, and no 
doubt went " gumming " about Athens with very 
little care of what was in the pot for dinner. 

If the summer visitors measured Old Phelps, 
he also measured them by his own standards. 
He used to write out what he called " short-faced 
descriptions " of his comrades in the woods, 
which were never so flatterino: as true. It was 



104 Z/Y THE WILDERNESS. 

curious to see how the various qualities which are 
esteemed in society appeared in his ej'es, looked 
at merely in their relation to the limited world he 
knew, and judged by their adaptation to the 
primitive life. It was a much subtler comparison 
than that of the ordinary guide, who rates his 
traveller by his abihty to endure on a march, to 
carry a pack, use an oar, hit a mark, or sing a 
song. Phelps brought his people to a test of 
their naturalness and sincerity, tried by contact 
with the verities of the woods. If a person 
failed to appreciate the woods, Phelps had no 
opinion of him or his culture ; and j^et, although 
he was perfectly satisfied with his own philosophy 
of life, worked out b}' close observation of nature 
and study of the Tri-bune, he was always eager 
for converse with superior minds, — with those 
who had the advantage of travel and much read- 
ing, and, above all, with those who had any origi- 
'nal " speckerlation." Of all the society he was 
ever permitted to enjoy, I think he prized most 
that of Dr. Bushnell. The doctor enjoyed the 
quaint and first-hand observations of the old 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 105 

woodsman, and Phelps found new worlds open 
to him in the wide ranges of the doctor's mind. 
They tallied by the hour upon all sorts of themes, 
— the growth of the tree, the habits of wild 
animals, the migration of seeds, the succession 
of oak and pine, not to mention theology, and 
the mysteries of the supernatural. 

I recall the bearing of Old Phelps, when, several 
3'ears ago, he conducted a party to the summit of 
Mount Marcy by the way he had " bushed out." 
This was his mountain, and he had a peculiar 
sense of ownership in it. In a way, it was holy 
ground ; and he would rather no one should go on 
it who did not feel its sanctity. Perhaps it was a 
sense of some divine relation in it that made him 
alwaj's speak of it as "Mere}'." To him this 
ridiculously dubbed Mount Marc}^ was alwa^^s 
'' Mount Mercy." By a like effort to soften the 
personal offensiveness of the nomenclature of 
this region, he invariably spoke of Dix's Peak, 
one of the southern peaks of the range, as 
"Dixie." It was some time since Phelps him- 
self had visited his mountain ; and, as he pushed 



106 m THE WILDERNESS. 

on through the miles of forest, we noticed a kind 
of eagerness in the old man, as of a lover going 
to a rendezvous. Along the foot of the moun- 
tain flows a clear trout-stream, secluded and un- 
disturbed in those awful solitudes, which is the 
" Merc}^ Brook" of the old woodsman. That 
day when he crossed it, in advance of his com- 
pan}', he was heard to saj'- in a low voice, as if 
greeting some object of which he was shjij* fond, 
"So, little brook, do 1 meet 3'ou once more?" 
and when we were well up the mountain, and 
emerged from the last stunted fringe of vegeta- 
tion upon the rock-bound slope, I saw Old Phelps, 
who was still foremost, cast himself upon the 
ground, and heard him cry, with an enthusiasm 
that was intended for no mortal ear, " I'm with 
you once again ! " His great passion very rarely 
found expression in an}^ such theatrical burst. 
The bare summit that day w^as swept b}^ a fierce, 
cold wind, and lost in an occasional chilling 
cloud. Some of the part^^ exhausted by the 
climb, and shivering in the rude wind, wanted a 
fire kindled and a cup of tea made, and thought 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 107 

this the guide's business. Fire and tea were far 
enough from his thought. He had withdrawn 
himself quite apart, and wrapped in a ragged 
blanket, still and silent as the rock he stood on, 
was gazing out upon the wilderness of peaks. 
The view from Marcy is 2)ecuhar. It is without 
softness or relief. The narrow vallej's are only 
dark shadows ; the lakes are bits of broken mir- 
ror. From horizon to horizon there is a tumultu- 
ous sea of billows turned to stone. You stand 
upon the highest billow ; 3'ou command the situa- 
tion ; you have surprised Nature in a high creative 
act ; the mighty primal energy has only just be- 
come repose. This was a supreme hour to Old 
Phelps. Tea! I believe the boys succeeded in 
kindhng a fire ; but the enthusiastic stoic had no 
reason to complain of want of appreciation in the 
rest of the i)avtj. When we were descending, he 
told us, with mingled humor and scorn, of a party 
of ladies he once led to the top of the mountain 
on a still da}^, who began immediate^ to talli 
about the fashions ! As he related the scene, 
stopping and facing us in the trail, his mild, far- 



r08 TiY THE WILBERNE8S. 

in eyes came to the front, and his voice rose with 
his language to a kind of scream. 

" Why, there tliey were, right before the great- 
est view they ever sazo, talliin' about the 
fasJiions / " 

Impossible to convey the accent of contempt 
in which he pronounced the word "fashions," 
and then added, with a sort of regretful bitter- 
ness, — 

" I was a great mind to come down, and leave 
'em there." 

In common with the Greeks, Old Phelps per- 
sonified the woods, mountains, and streams. 
They had not only personality, but distinctions of 
sex. It was something beyond the characteriza- 
tion of the hunter, which appeared, for instance, 
when he related a fight with a jDanther, in such 
expressions as, "Then Mr. Panther thought he 
would see what he could do," &c. He was in 
"imaginative sj^npathy " with all wild things. 
The afternoon we descended Marcy, we went 
away to the west, through the primeval forests, 
toward Avalanche and Golden, and followed the 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 109 

course of the charming Opalescent. When we 
reached the leaping stream, Phelps exclaimed, — 

"Here's little Miss Opalescent ! " 

" Wh}^ don't 3^ou saj^ Mr. Opalescent?" some 
one asked. 

"Oh, she's too pretty!" And too pretty she 
was, with her foam- white and rainbow dress, and 
her downfalls, and fountain-hke uprising. A be- 
witching young person we found her all that sum- 
mer afternoon. 

This sj'lph-lilie person had little in common 
with a monstrous lad}^ whose adventures in the 
wilderness Phelps was fond of relating. She 
was built something on the plan of the mountains, 
and her ambition to explore was equal to her 
size. Phelps and the other guides once suc- 
ceeded in raising her to the top of Marc}^ ; but 
the feat of getting a hogshead of molasses up 
there would have been easier. In attempting to 
give us an idea of her magnitude that night, as 
we sat in the forest camp, Phelps hesitated a 
moment, while he cast his qjq around the woods : 
" Waal, there ain't no tree ! " 



110 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

It is only by recalling fragmentary remarks 
and incidents that I can put the reader in pos- 
session of the peculiarities of my subject ; and 
this involves the wrenching of things out of their 
natural order and continuity, and introducing 
them abruptly, — an abruptness illustrated by the 
remark of ' ' Old Man Hoskins ' ' (which Phelps 
liked to quote) , when one da}^ he suddenly' slipped 
down a bank into a thicket, and seated himself 
in a wasps' nest: "I hain't no business here; 
but here I be ! " 

The first time we went into camp on the Upper 
Ausable Pond, which has been justly celebrated 
as the most prettil}" set sheet of water in the re- 
gion, we were disposed to build our shant}^ on 
the south side, so that we could have in full view 
the Gothics and that loveliest of mountain con- 
tours. To our surprise. Old Phelps, whose senti- 
mental weakness for these mountains we knew, 
opposed this. His favorite camping-ground was 
on the north side, — a pretty site in itself, but 
with no special view. In order to enjoy the lovely 
mountains, we should be obliged to row out into 



A CHARACTER STUDY. Ill 

the lake : we wanted them always before our 
ej^es, — at sunrise and sunset, and in the blaze 
of noon. With dehberate speech, as if weighing 
our arguments and disposing of them, he replied, 
"Waal, now, them Gothics ain't the kinder 
scenerj^ 3^ou want ter hog doivn ! ' ' 

It was on quiet Sundaj's in the woods, or in 
talks by the camp-fire, that Phelps came out as 
the philosopher, and commonly contributed the 
light of his observations. Unfortunate marriages, 
and marriages in general, were, on one occasion, 
the subject of discussion ; and a good deal of 
darkness had been cast on it by various speakers ; 
when Phelps suddenly piped up, from a log where 
he had sat silent, almost invisible, in the shadow 
and smoke, — 

" Waal, now, when 3'ou've said all there is to 
be said, marriage is mostly for disciphne." 

Discipline, certainl3^, the old man had, in one 
way or another ; and 3^ears of solitary com- 
muning in the forest had given him, perhaps, a 
childlike insight into spiritual concerns. Wheth- 
er he had formulated any creed, or what faith he 



112 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

had, I never knew. Keene Valley had a reputa- 
tion of not ripening Christians any more success- 
fully than maize, the season there being short ; 
and on our first visit it was said to contain but 
one Bible Christian, though I think an accurate 
census disclosed three. Old Phelps, who some- 
times made abrupt remarks in tr3'ing situations, 
was not included in this census ; but he was the 
disciple of supernaturalism in a most charming 
form. I have heard of his opening his inmost 
thoughts to a lad}", one Sunday", after a noble 
sermon of Robertson's had been read in the 
cathedral stillness of the forest. His experience 
was entirely first-hand, and related with uncon- 
sciousness that it was not common to all. There 
was nothing of the mystic or the sentimentalist, 
onl}" a vivid realism, in that nearness of God of 
which he spoke, — "as neai' sometimes as those 
trees," — and of the holy voice, that, in a time 
of inward struggle, had seemed to him to come 
from the depths of the forest, saving, " Poor 
soul, I am the way." 

In later 3'ears there was a " revival " in Keene 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 113 

Valley, the result of which was a number of 
young " converts," whom Phelps seemed to re- 
gard as a veteran might raw recruits, and to have 
his doubts what sort of soldiers they would make. 

" Waal, Jimmj^," he said to one of them, 
"you've kindled a prett}^ good fire with light 
wood. That's what we do of a dark night in the 
woods, 3^ou know ; but we do it just so as we can 
look around and find the sohd wood : so now 
put on your solid wood." 

In the Sunday Bible-classes of the period Phelps 
was a perpetual anxietj^to the others, who followed 
closely the printed lessons, and beheld with alarm 
his discursive efibrts to get into freer air and light. 
His remarks were the most refreshing part of the 
exercises, but were outside of the safe path into 
which the others thought it necessary to win him 
from his " speckerlations." The class were one 
day on the verses concerning "God's word" 
being " written on the heart," and were keeping 
close to the shore, under the guidance of 
"Barnes's Notes," when Old Phelps made a dive 
to the bottom, and remarked that he had "thought 



114 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

a good deal about the expression, ' God's word 
written on the heart,' and had been asking him- 
self how that was to be done ; and suddenly it 
occurred to him (having been much interested 
lately in watching the work of a photographer) , 
that, when a photograph is going to be taken, all 
that has to be done is to put the object in posi- 
tion, and the sun makes the picture ; and so he 
rather thought that all we had got to do was to 
put our hearts in place, and God would do the 
writin'." 

Phelps's theology, like his science, is first-hand. 
In the woods, one day, talli ran on the Trinit}^ as 
being nowhere asserted as a doctrine in the Bible ; 
and some one suggested that the attempt to pack 
these great and fluent m3^steries into one word 
must always be more or less unsatisfactory. 
" Te-es," droned Phelps: "I never could see 
much speckerlation in that expression the Trinity. 
Why, they'd a good deal better say Legion." 

The sentiment of the man about nature, or his 
poetic sensibihty, was frequentl3^ not to be dis- 
tinguished from a natural religion, and was always 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 115 

tinged with the devoutness of Wordsworth's 
verse. Climbing slowly one day up the Bal- 
een}^, — he was more than usually calm and slow, 
— he espied an exquisite fragile flower in thie 
crevice of a rock, in a very lonely spot. 

"It seems as if," he said, or rather dreamed 
out, — "it seems as if the Creator had kept some- 
thing just to look at himself." 

To a lady whom he had taken to Chapel Pond 
(a retired but rather uninteresting spot) , and who 
expressed a little disappointment at its tameness, 
saying, 

" Wh}^, Mr. Phelps, the principal charm of 
this place seems to be its loneliness," — 

"Yes," he replied in gentle and lingering 
tones, " and its nativeness. It lies here just 
where it was born." 

Rest and quiet had infinite attractions for him. 
A secluded opening in the woods was a ' ' calm 
spot." He told of seeing once, or rather being 
in, a circular rainbow. He stood on Indian Head, 
overlooking the Lower Lake, so that he saw the 
whole bow in the sky and the lake, and seemed to 



116 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

be in the midst of it ; " onl}^ at one place there 
was an indentation in it, where it rested on the 
lake, just enough to keep it from rolling off." 
This ' ' resting ' ' of the sphere seemed to give 
him great comfort. 

One Indian-summer morning in October, some 
ladies found the old man sitting on his doorstep, 
smoking a short pipe. He gave no sign of rec- 
ognition of their approach, except a twinkle of 
the e3^e, being evidentl}^ quite in harmony with 
the peaceful da}'. The}' stood there a full minute 
before he opened his mouth : then he did not rise, 
but slowl}' took his pipe from his mouth, and said 
in a dreamy wa}', pointing towards the brook, — 

"Do you see that tree?" indicating a maple 
almost denuded of leaves, which \^j like a yellow 
garment cast at its feet. " I've been watching 
that tree all the morning. There hain't been a 
breath of wind : but for hours the leaves have 
.been falling, Mling, just as you see them now ; 
and at last it's pretty much bare." And after a 
pause, pensively : " Waal, I suppose its hour had 
come." 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 117 

This contemplative habit of Old Phelps is 
whoU}^ unappreciated by his neighbors ; bat it 
has been indulged in no inconsiderable j^art of 
his life. Eising after a time, he said, " Now I 
want you to go with me and see my golden city 
I've talked so much about." He led the way to 
a hill-outlook, when suddenly, emerging from the 
forest, the spectators saw revealed the winding 
valley and its stream. He said quietly, "There 
is my golden city." Far below, at their feet, 
they saw that vast assemblage of birches and 
" popples," 3^ellow as gold in the brooding noon- 
day, and slender spires rising out of the glowing 
mass. Without another word, PheljDS sat a long 
time in silent content : it was to him, as Bunyan 
says, " a place desirous to be in." 

Is this i^hilosopher contented with what life has 
brought him ? Si^eaking of mone^^ one day, when 
we had asked him if he should do differently if 
he had his life to live over again, he said, " Yes, 
but not about money. To have had hours such 
as I have had in these mountains, and with such 
men as Dr. Bushnell and Dr. Shaw and Mr. 



118 Iir THE WILDERNESS. 

Twichell, and others I could name, is worth all 
the money the world could give." He read char- 
acter very well, and took in accuratelj^ the bo}" 
nature. "Tom" (an irrepressible, rather over- 
done specimen) , — " Tom's a nice kind of a bo}' ; 
but he's got to come up against a snubbin'-post 
one of these days." — " Bo}- s I " he once said: 
" you can't git boys to take any kinder notice of 
scenery. I never yet saw a boy that would look 
a second time at a sunset. Now, a girl yfiW. some- 
times; but even then it's instantaneous, — comes 
and goes like the sunset. As for me," still speak- 
ing of scenery, "these mountains about here, 
that I see every day, are no more to me, in one 
sense, than a man's farm is to him. What mostly 
interests me now is when I see some new freak 
or shape in the face of Nature." 

In literature it may be said that Old Phelps 
prefers the best in the very limited range that 
has been open to him. Tennj^son is his favorite 
among poets ; an affinity explained by the fact 
that they are both lotos-eaters. Speaking of a 
lecture-room tallv of Mr. Beecher's which he had 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 119 

read, he said, " It filled my cup about as full as 
I calleiiate to have it : there was a good deal of 
truth in it, and some poetry ; waal, and a little 
spice too. We've got to have the spice, you 
know." He admired, for different reasons, a 
lecture by Greeley that he once heard, into which 
so much knowledge of various kinds was crowded, 
that he said he " made a reg'lar gobble of it." 
He was not without discrimination, which he ex- 
ercised upon the local preaching when nothing 
better offered. Of one sermon he said, "The 
man began way back at the creation, and just 
preached right along down ; and he didn't say 
nothing, after all. It just seemed to me as if he 
was tryin' to git up a kind of a fix-up." 

Old Phelps used words sometimes lilie alge- 
braic signs, and had a habit of making one do 
duty for a season together for all occasions. 
" Speckerlation " and " callerlation " and "fix- 
up" are specimens of words that were prolific 
in expression. An unusual expression, or an 
unusual article, would be characterized as a " kind 
of a scientific Hterary git-up." 



120 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

"What is the ]programnie for to-morrow?" I 
once asked him. " Waal, I callerlate, if they 
rig up the callerlation they callerlate on, we'll go 
to the Boreas." Starting out for a day's tramp 
in the woods, he would ask whether we wanted 
to take a " reg'lar walk, or a random scoot," — 
the latter being a plunge into the pathless forest. 
When he was on such an expedition, and became 
entangled in dense brush, and maybe a network 
of " slash " and swamp, he was like an old wiz- 
ard, as he looked here and there, seeking a way, 
peering into the tangle, or withdrawing from a 
thicket, and muttering to himself, " There ain't no 
speckerlation there." And when the waj^ became 
altogether inscrutable, — "Waal, this is a reg'lar 
random scoot of a rigmarole." As some one re- 
marked, "The dictionary in his hands is like clay 
in the hands of the potter." A petrifaction was 
a " kind of a hard-wood chemical git-up." 

There is no conceit, we are apt to say, hke that 
born of isolation from the world, and there are 
no such conceited people as those who have lived 
all their lives in the woods. Phelps was, however, 



A CHARACTEB STUDY. 121 

unsophisticated in his until the advent of stran- 
gers into his life, who brought in literature and 
various other disturbing influences. I am sorry 
to say that the effect has been to take oflf some- 
thing of the bloom of his simplicity, and to ele- 
vate him into an oracle. I suppose this is inevi- 
table as soon as one goes into print ; and Phelps 
has gone into print in the local papers. He has 
been bitten with the literary "git-up." Justly 
regarding most of the Adirondack literature as a 
*' perfect fizzle," he has himself projected a work, 
and written much on the natural history of his 
region. Long ago he made a large map of the 
mountain country ; and, until recent surveys, it 
was the only one that could lay any claim to ac- 
curacy. His history is no doubt original in form, 
and unconventional in expression. Like most of 
the writers of the seventeenth century, and the 
court ladies and gentlemen of the eighteenth cen- 
tur}^, he is an independent speller. Writing of 
his work on the Adirondacks, he says, " If I 
should ever live to get this wonderful thing writ- 
ten, I expect it will show one thing, if no more ; 



122 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

and that is, that every thing has an opposite. I 
expect to show in this that literature has an oppo- 
site, if I do not show an}^ thing els. We could 
not enjoy the blessings and happiness of riteous- 
ness if we did not know innicuty was in the 
world : in fact, there would be no riteousness with- 
out innicuty." Writing also of his great enjo}'- 
ment of being in the woods, especially since he 
has had the societ}^ there of some people he 
names, he adds, "And since I have Literature, 
Siance, and Art all spread about on the green 
moss of the mountain woods or the gravell banks 
of a cristle stream, it seems like finding roses, hon- 
e^^suckels, and violets on a crisp brown cliflT in 
December. You know I don't believe much in 
the religion of seramony ; but an}^ riteous thing 
that has life and spirit in it is food for me." I 
must not neglect to mention an essay, continued 
in several numbers of his local paper, on "The 
Growth of the Tree," in which he demolishes the 
theor^^ of Mr. Greeley, whom he calls "one of 
the best vegetable philosophers," about "growth 
without seed." He treats of the office of sap: 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 123 

' ' All trees have some kind of sap and some kind 
of operation of sap flowing in their season," — 
the dissemination of seeds, the processes of 
gi'owth, the power of heahng wounds, the pro- 
portion of roots to branches, &c. Speaking of 
the latter, he ssljs, " I have thought it would be 
one of the greatest curiosities on earth to see a 
thrifty growing maple or elm, that had grown on a 
deep soil interval to be two feet in diameter, to be 
raised clear into the air with every root and fibre 
down to the minutest thread, all entu-ety cleared 
of soil, so that every particle could be seen in its 
natural position. I think it would astonish even 
the wise ones." From his instinctive s^^mpathy 
with nature, he often credits vegetable organism 
with "instinctive judgment." "Observation 
teaches us that a tree is given j)owerful instincts, 
which would almost appear to amount to judg- 
ment in some cases, to provide for its own wants 
and necessities." 

Here our study must cease. When the primi- 
tive man comes into literature, he is no longer 
primitive. 



VI. 



CAMPING OUT. 




T seems to be agreed that civilization is 
kept up only by a constant effort : Nature 
claims its own speedily when the effort is 
relaxed. If you clear a patch of fertile ground 
in the forest, uproot the stumps, ancT plant it, 
year after year, in potatoes and maize, you say 
you have subdued it. But, if you leave it for a 
season or two, a kind of barbarism seems to steal 
out upon it from the circling woods ; coarse grass 
and brambles cover it ; bushes spring up in a 
wild tangle ; the raspbeny and the blackberry 
flower and fruit, and the humorous bear feeds 
upon them. The last state of that ground is 
worse than the first. 

Perhaps the cleared spot is called Ephesus. 

124 



CAMPING OUT. 125 



There is a splendid citj^ on the plain ; there are 
temples and theatres on the hills ; the commerce 
of the world seeks its port ; the luxury of the 
Orient flows through its marble streets. You are 
there one day when the sea has receded : the 
plain is a pestilent marsh ; the temples, the 
theatres, the loftj^ gates, have sunken and crum- 
bled, and the wild-brier runs over them ; and, as 
you grow pensive in the most desolate place in 
the world, a bandit lounges out of a tomb, and 
offers to relieve jow of all that which creates 
artificial distinctions in society. The higher the 
civilization has risen, the more abject is the des- 
olation of barbarism that ensues. The most 
melancholy spot in the Adirondacks is not a 
tamarack- swamp, where the traveller wades in 
moss and mire, and the atmosphere is composed 
of equal active parts of black-flies, mosquitoes, 
and midges. It is the village of the Adirondack 
Iron -Works, where the streets of gainit houses are 
falhng to pieces, tenantless ; the factor}^- wheels 
h'ave stopped ; the furnaces are in ruins ; the iron 
and wooden machiner}' is strewn about in helpless 



126 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

detachment ; and heaps of charcoal, ore, and 
slag, proclaim an arrested industry. Beside this 
deserted village, even Calamity Pond, shallow, 
sedgy, with its ragged shores of stunted firs, 
and its melancholy shaft that marks the spot 
where the proprietor of the iron-works accident- 
ally shot himself, is cheerful. 

The instinct of barbarism that leads people 
periodically to throw aside the habits of civiliza- 
tion, and seek the freedom and discomfort of the 
woods, is explicable enough ; but it is not so 
easy to understand why this passion should be 
strongest in those who are most refined, and most 
trained in intellectual and social fastidiousness. 
Philistinism and shoddy do not like the woods, 
unless it becomes fashionable to do so ; and then, 
as speedily as possible, they introduce their arti- 
ficial luxuries, and reduce the life in the wilder- 
ness to the vulgarity of a well-fed picnic. It is 
they who have strewn the Adirondacks with 
paper collars and tin cans. The real enjoyment 
of camping and tramping in the woods lies in a 
return to primitive conditions of lodging, dress, 



CAMPING OUT.' 127 



and food, in as total an escape as may be from 
the requirements of civilization. And it remains 
to be explained wh}- this is enjoj'Cd most by those 
who are most highly civilized. It is wonderful 
to see how easily the restraints of society fall 
off. Of course it is not true that courtesy 
depends upon clothes with the best people ; but, 
with others, behavior hangs almost entirely upon 
dress. Many good habits are easily got rid of 
in the woods. Doubt sometimes seems to be felt 
whether Sunda}^ is a legal hohdaj^ there. It be- 
comes a question of casuistry with a clergj^man 
whether he may shoot at a mark on Sunday, if 
none of his congregation are present. He in- 
tends no harm : he only gratifies a curiosity to 
see if he can hit the mark. Where shall he draw 
the line? Doubtless he might throw a stone at a 
chipmunk, or shout at a loon. Might he fire at a 
mark with an air-gun that makes no noise ? He 
will not fish or hunt on Sunda}^ (although he is 
no more likely to catch an}^ thing that day than 
on anj^ other) ; but may he eat trout that the 
guide has caught on Sunday, if the guide swears 



128 m THE WILDERNESS. 

he caught them Saturday night ? Is there such a 
thing as a vacation in religion ? How much of 
our virtue do we owe to inherited habits ? 

I am not at all sure whether this desire to 
camp outside of civilization is creditable to hu- 
man nature, or otherwise. We hear sometimes 
that the Turk has been mercl}^ camping for four 
centuries in Europe. I suspect that manj' of us 
are, after all, really camping temporaril}' in civil- 
ized conditions ; and that going into the wilder- 
ness is an escape, longed for, into our natural 
and preferred state. Consider what this "camp- 
ing out "is, that is confessedly so agreeable to 
people most dehcately reared. I have no desire 
to exaggerate its delights. 

The Adirondack wilderness is essentially un- 
broken. A few bad roads that penetrate it, a few 
jolting wagons that traverse them, a few barn- 
like boarding-houses on the edge of the forest, 
where the boarders are soothed b}' patent coffee, 
and stimulated to unnatural gayety hy Japan tea, 
and experimented on by unique cooker}^, do little 
to destroy the savage fascination of the region. 



CAMPING OUT. 129 



In half an hour, at any point, one can put him- 
self into solitude and every desirable discomfort. 
The part}^ that covets the experience of the camp 
comes down to primitive conditions of dress and 
equipment. There are guides and porters to 
carr}'' the blankets for beds, the raw provisions, 
and the camp equipage ; and the motle}^ party of 
the temporarily decivilized files into the woods, 
and begins, perhaps by a road, perhaps on a 
trail, its exhilarating and weary march. The 
exhilaration arises partly from the casting aside 
of restraint, partly from the adventure of explo- 
ration ; and the weariness, from the interminable 
toil of bad walking, a heav}^ pack, and the grim 
monotony of trees and bushes, that shut out all 
iprospect, except an occasional glimpse of the sk}^ 
Mountains are painfull}^ climbed, streams forded, 
lonesome lakes paddled over, long and muddy 
"carries" traversed. Fancy this part}^ the vic- 
tim of political exile, banished by the law, and a 
more sorrowful march could not be imagined ; 
but the voluntar}^ hardship becomes pleasure, 
and it is undeniable that the spirits of the party 
rise as the difficulties increase. 



130 m THE WILDERNESS. 

For this straggling and stumbling band the 
world is young again : it has come to the begin- 
ning of things ; it has cut loose from tradition, 
and is free to make a home anywhere : the move- 
ment has all the promise of a revolution. All 
this virginal freshness invites the primitive in- 
stincts of play and disorder. The free range 
of the forests suggests endless possibilities of 
exploration and possession. Perhaps we are 
treading where man since the creation never 
trod before ; perhaps the waters of this bubbling 
spring, which we deepen by scraping out the 
decayed leaves and the black earth, have never 
been tasted before, except by the wild denizens 
of these woods. We cross the trails of lurking 
animals, — paths that heighten our sense of 
seclusion from the world. The hammering of 
the infrequent woodpecker, the call of the lonely 
bird, the drumming of the sohtar}^ partridge, — ■ 
all these sounds do but emphasize the lonesome- 
ness of nature. The roar of the mountain brook, 
dashing over its bed of pebbles, rising out of the 
ravine, and spreading, as it were, a mist of sound 



CAMPING OUT. 131 



through all the forest (continuous beating waves, 
that have the rh3^thni of eternity in them), and 
the fitful movement of the air-tides through the 
balsams and firs and the giant pines, — how these 
grand sj^mphonies shut out the little exaspera- 
tions of our vexed hfe ! It seems easy to begin 
hfe over again on the simplest terms. Probably 
it is not so much the desire of the congregation 
to escape from the preacher, or of the preacher 
to escape from himself, that drives sophisticated 
people into the wilderness, as it is the uncon- 
quered craving for primitive simplicity, the revolt 
against the everlasting dress-parade of our civili- 
zation. From this monstrous pomposity even 
the artificial rusticity of a Petit Trianon is a 
rehef. It was only human nature that the jaded 
Frenchman of the regency should run away to 
the New World, and live in a forest-hut with an 
Indian squaw ; although he found little satisfac- 
tion in his act of heroism, unless it was tallied 
about at Versailles. 

When our trampers come, late in the after- 
noon, to the bank of a lovely lake where they 



132 IN THE WILDERNESS. 



]3urpose to enter the primitive life, every thing is 
waiting for them in virgin expectation. There is 
a little promontory jutting into the lake, and 
sloping down to a sandy beach, on which the 
waters idly lapse, and shoals of red-fins and 
shiners come to greet the stranger ; the forest 
is untouched by the axe ; the tender green 
sweeps the water's edge ; ranlis of slender firs 
are marshalled b}^ the shore ; clumps of white- 
birch stems shine in satin purity among the ever- 
greens ; the boles of giant spruces, maples, and 
oaks, lifting high their crowns of foliage, stretch 
away in endless galleries and arcades ; through 
the shifting leaves the sunshine falls upon the 
brown earth ; overhead are fragments of blue 
sky ; under the boughs and in chance openings 
appear the bluer lake and the outline of the 
gracious mountains. The discoverers of this 
paradise, which they have entered to destroy, 
note the babbling of the brook that flows close at 
hand ; they hear the splash of the leaping fish ; 
they hsten to the sweet, metalUc song of the 
evening thrush, and the chatter of the red 



CAMPING OUT. 133 



squirrel, who angrily challenges their right to be 
there. But the moment of sentiment passes. 
This party has come here to eat and to sleep, 
and not to encourage Nature in her poetic atti- 
tudinizing. 

The spot for a shanty is selected. This side 
shall be its opening, towards the lake ; and in 
front of it the fire, so that the smoke shall drift 
into the hut, and discourage the mosquitoes ; 
3'onder shall be the cook's fire and the path to 
the spring. The whole colonj^ bestir themselves 
in the foundation of a new home, — an enterprise 
that has all the fascination, and none of the 
danger, of a veritable new settlement in the wil- 
derness. The axes of the guides resound in the 
echoing spaces ; great trunks fall with a crash ; 
vistas are o^Dened towards the lake and the moun- 
tains. The spot for the shanty is cleared of 
underbrush ; forked stakes are driven into the 
ground, cross-pieces are laid on them, and poles 
sloping back to the ground. In an incredible 
space of time there is the skeleton of a house, 
which is entirely open in front. The roof and 



134 m THE WILDERNESS. 

sides must be covered. For this purpose the 
trunks of great spruces are skinned. The wood- 
man rims the bark near the foot of the tree, and 
again six feet above, and slashes it perpendicu- 
larly ; then, with a blunt stick, he crowds off this 
thick hide exactly as an ox is skinned. It needs 
but a few of these skins to cover the roof; and 
the}^ make a perfectly water-tight roof, except 
when it rains. Meantime, busy hands have 
gathered boughs of the spruce and the feathery 
balsam, and shingled the ground underneath the 
shanty for a bed. It is an aromatic bed : in 
theory it is elastic and consoling. Upon it are 
spread the blankets. The sleepers, of all sexes 
and ages, are to he there in a row, their feet to 
the fire, and their heads under the edge of the 
sloping roof. Nothing could be better contrived. 
The fire is in front : it is not a fire, but a confla- 
gration — a vast heap of green logs set on fire — 
of pitch, and split dead-wood, and crackling bal- 
sams, raging and roaring. B}^ the time twihght 
falls, the cook has prepared supper. Every thing 
has been cooked in a tin pail and a skillet, — • 



CAMPING OUT. 135 



potatoes, tea, pork, mutton, slapjacks. You 
wonder how every thing could have been prepared 
in so few utensils. When 3^ou eat, the wonder 
ceases : every thing might have been cooked in 
one pail. It is a noble meal ; and nobly is it 
disposed of b}' these amateur savages, sitting 
about upon logs and roots of trees. Never were 
there such potatoes, never beans that seemed to 
have more of the bean in them, never such curly 
pork, never trout with more Indian-meal on 
them, never mutton more distinctly sheepy ; and 
the tea, drunk out of a tin cup, with a lump of 
maple-sugar dissolved in it, — it is the sort of 
tea that takes hold, lifts the hair, and disposes 
the drinker to anecdote and hilariousness. There 
is no deception about it : it tastes of tannin and 
spruce and creosote. Every thing, in short, has 
the flavor of the wilderness and a free life. It is 
idyllic. And yet, with all our sentimentalitj^, 
there is nothing feeble about the cooking. The 
slapjacks are a solid job of work, made to last, 
and not go to pieces in a person's stomach like 
a trivial bun ; we might record on them, in cunei- 



136 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

form characters, our incipient civilization ; and 
future generations would doubtless turn them up 
as Acadian bricks. Good, robust victuals are 
what the primitive man wants. 

Darkness falls suddenly. Outside the ring of 
light from our conflagration the woods are black. 
There is a tremendous impression of isolation 
and lonesomeness in our situation. We are the 
prisoners of the night. The woods never seemed 
so vast and mj^sterious. The trees are gigantic. 
There are noises that we do not understand, — 
mj^sterious winds passing overhead, and rambhng 
in the great galleries, tree-trunks grinding against 
each other, undefinable stirs and uneasinesses. 
The shapes of those who pass into the dimness 
are outlined in monstrous proportions. The 
spectres, seated about in the glare of the fire, 
talk about appearances and presentiments and 
religion. The guides cheer the night with bear- 
'fights, and catamount encounters, and frozen- to- 
death experiences, and simple tales of great 
prohxity and no point, and jokes of primitive 
lucidity. We hear catamounts, and the stealthy 



CAMPING OUT. 137 



tread of things in the leaves, and the hooting of 
owls, and, when the moon rises, the laughter of 
the loon. Every thing is strange, spectral, fasci- 
nating. 

By and by we get our positions in the shanty 
for the night, and arrange the row of sleepers. 
The shanty has become a smoke-house by this 
time : waves of smoke roll into it from the fire. 
It is only by lying down, and getting the head 
well under the eaves, that one can breathe. No 
one can find her " things ; " nobody has a pillow. 
At length the row is laid out, with the solemn 
protestation of intention to sleep. The wind, 
shifting, drives away the smoke. Good- night is 
said a hundred times ; positions are re-adjusted, 
more last words, new shifting about, final re- 
marks ; it is all so comfortable and romantic ; 
and then silence. Silence continues for a minute. 
The fire flashes up ; all the row of heads is lifted 
up simultaneously to watch it ; showers of sparks 
sail aloft into the blue night ; the vast vault of 
greenery is a faiiy spectacle. How the sparks 
mount and twinkle and disappear like tropical 



138 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

fire-flies, and all the leaves murmur, and clap 
their hands ! Some of the sparks do not go out : 
we see them flaming in the sky when the flame 
of the fire has died down. Well, good-night, 
good-night. More folding of the arms to sleep ; 
more grumbling about the hardness of a hand- 
bag,, or the insufficiency of a pocket-handlierchief, 
for a pillow. Good-night. Was that a remark ? 
— something about a root, a stub in the ground 
sticking into the back. " You couldn't he along 
a hair?" — "Well, no: here's another stub." 
It needs but a moment for the conversation to 
become general, — about roots under the shoulder, 
stubs in the back, a ridge on which it is impos- 
sible for the sleeper to balance, the non-elasticity 
of boughs, the hardness of the ground, the heat, 
the smoke, the chilly air. Subjects of remarks 
multiply. The whole camp is awake, and chat- 
tering like an aviary. The owl is also awake ; 
but the guides who are asleep outside make more 
noise than the owls. Water is wanted, and is 
handed about in a dipper. Everybody is yawn- 
ing ; everybody is now determined to go to sleep 



CAMPING OUT. 139 



in good earnest. A last good-night. There is 
an appalling silence. It is interrupted in the 
most natural way in the world. Somebody has 
got the start, and gone to sleep. He proclaims 
the fact. He seems to have been brought up on 
the seashore, and to know how to make all the 
deep-toned noises of the restless ocean. He is 
also like a war-horse ; or, it is suggested, like a 
saw-horse. How malignantly^ he snorts, and 
breaks off short, and at once begins again in 
another key ! One head is raised after another. 

''Who is that?" 

" Somebody punch him.'* 

" Turn him over." 

" Eeason with him." 

The sleeper is turned over. The turn was a 
mistake. He was before, it appears, on his most 
agreeable side. The camp rises in indignation. 
The sleeper sits up in bewilderment. Before he 
can go off again, two or three others have pre- 
ceded him. They are all alil^e. You never can 
judge what a person is when he is awake. There 
are here half a dozen distm-bers of the peace who 



140 m THE WILDERNESS. 

should be put in solitaiy confinement. At mid- 
night, when a philosopher crawls out to sit on a 
log by the fire, and smoke a pipe, a duet in tenor 
and mezzo-soprano is going on in the shanty, 
with a chorus alwaj^s coming in at the wrong time. 
Those who are not asleep want to know why the 
smoker doesn't go to bed. He is requested to 
get some water, to throw on another log, to see 
what time it is, to note whether it looks like rain. 
A buzz of conversation arises. She is sure she 
heard something behind the shanty. He sa3^s it 
is all nonsense. " Perhaps, however, it might be 
a mouse." 

" Mercy ! Are there mice? " 

"Plenty." 

"Then that's what I heard nibbling by my 
head. I sha'n't sleep a winli ! Do they bite? " 

"No, they nibble; scarcely ever take a full 
bite out." 

" It's horrid ! " 

Towards morning it grows chilly; the guides 
have let the fire go out; the blankets will sUp 
down. Anxiety begins to be expressed about the 
dawn. 



CAMPING OUT, 141 



" What time does the sun rise? " 

" Awful eaiij^ Did 3'ou sleep? " 

" Not a wink. And 3^ou? " 

"In spots. I'm going to dig up this root as 
soon as it is light enough." 

" See that mist on the lake, and the light just 
coming on the Gothics ! I'd no idea it was so 
cold : all the first part of the night I was roasted." 

" What were they taUiing about all night? " 

When the party crawls out to the early break- 
fast, after it has washed its faces in the lake, it 
is disorganized, but cheerful. Nobody admits 
much sleep ; but everj^body is refreshed, and de- 
clares it delightful. It is the fresh air all night 
that invigorates ; or maybe it is the tea, or the 
slapjacks. The guides have erected a table of 
spruce bark, with benches at the sides ; so that 
breakfast is taken in form. It is served on tin 
plates and oak chips. After breakfast begins the 
day's work. It may be a mountain-climbing ex- 
pedition, or rowing and angling in the lake, or 
fishing for trout in some stream two or three miles 
distant. Nobodj^ can stir far from camp without 



142 m THE WILDERNESS. 

a guide. Hammocks are swung, bowers are 
built, novel-reading begins, worsted work ap- 
pears, cards are shuffled and dealt. The day 
passes in absolute freedom from responsibility to 
one's self. At night, when the expeditions re- 
turn, the camp resumes its animation. Adven- 
tures are recounted, every statement of the 
narrator being disputed and argued. Everybody 
has become an adept in wood-craft ; but nobody 
credits his neighbor with like instinct. Society 
getting resolved into its elements, confidence is 
gone. 

Whilst the hilarious party are at supper, a drop 
or two of rain falls. The head guide is appealed 
to. Is it going to rain? He saj^s it does rain. 
But will it be a rainy night? The guide goes 
down to the lake, looks at the sky, and concludes, 
that, if the wind shifts a p'int more, there is no 
telling what sort of weather we shall have. Mean- 
"time the drops patter thicker on the leaves over- 
head, and the leaves, in turn, pass the water down 
to the table ; the sky darkens ; the wind rises ; 
there is a kind of shiver in the woods ; and we 



CAMPING OUT, 143 



scud away into the shanty, taking the remains of 
our supper, and eating it as best we can. The 
rain increases. The fire sputters and fumes. All 
the trees are dripping, dripping, and the ground 
is wet. We cannot step out-doors without get- 
ting a drenching. Like sheep, we are penned in 
the little hut, where no one can stand erect. 
The rain swirls into the open front, and wets 
the bottom of the blankets. The smoke drives 
in. We curl up, and enjoy ourselves. The 
guides at length conclude that it is going to be 
damp. The dismal situation sets us all into good 
spirits ; and it is later than the night before when 
we crawl under our blankets, sure this time of a 
sound sleep, lulled b}^ the storm and the rain re- 
sounding on the bark roof. How much better off 
we are than many a shelterless wretch ! We are 
as snug as dry herrings. At the moment, how- 
ever, of dropping off to sleep, somebod}^ unfortu- 
nately notes a drop of water on his face ; this is 
followed by another drop ; in an instant a stream 
is established. He moves his head to a dr}' place. 
Scarcely has he done so, when he feels a damp- 



144 ZAT THE WILDERNESS. 

ness in his back. Eeactiing his hand outside, 
he finds a puddle of water soaking tlirough his 
blanket. By this time, somebod}^ inquires if 
it is possible that the roof leaks. One man has 
a stream of water under him ; another saj^s it is 
coming into his ear. The roof appears to be a 
discriminating sieve. Those who are dry see no 
need of such a fuss. The man in the corner 
spreads his umbrella, and the protective measure 
is resented by his neighbor. In the darkness 
there is recrimination. One of the guides, who 
is summoned, suggests that the rubber blankets 
be passed out, and spread over the roof. The in- 
mates dislike the proposal, saying that a shower- 
bath is no worse than a tub-bath. The rain con- 
tinues to soak down. The fire is only half alive. 
The bedding is damp. Some sit up, if they can 
find a dry spot to sit on, and smoke. Heartless 
observations are made. A few sleep. And the 
night wears on. The morning opens cheerless. 
The sky is still leaking, and so is the shanty. 
The guides bring in a half-cooked breakfast. The 
roof is patched up. There are reviving signs of 



CAMPING OUT. 145 



breaking awa}^, delusive signs that create mo- 
mentaiy exhilaration. Even if the storm clears, 
the woods are soaked. There is no chance of 
stirring. The world is oiil}' ten feet square. 

This life, without responsibility or clean clothes, 
may continue as long as the reader desires. 
There are those who would like to live in this free 
fashion forever, taking rain and sun as heaven 
pleases ; and there are some souls so constituted 
that they cannot exist more than three daj^s with- 
out their worldly baggage. Taking the party 
altogether, from one cause or another it is likely 
to strike camp sooner than was intended. And 
the stricken camp is a melancholy sight. The 
woods have been despoiled ; the stumps are ugly ; 
the bushes are scorched ; the pine-leaf-strewn 
earth is trodden into mire ; the landing looks like 
a cattle-ford ; the ground is littered with all the 
unsightl}^ debris of a hand-to-hand life ; the dis- 
mantled shant}^ is a shabby object; the charred 
and blackened logs, where the fire blazed, sug- 
gest the extinction of family life. Man has 
wrought his usual wrong upon Natm^e, and he can 



146 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

save his self-respect onl}^ by moving to virgin 
forests. 

And move to them he will, the next season, if 
not this. For he who has once experienced the 
fascination of the woods-life never escapes its en- 
ticement : in the memory nothing remains but its 
charm. 




HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 



74. 



HOW SPEINa CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 



BY A READER OF 



'93.' 




EW ENGLAND is the battle-ground of 
the seasons. It is La Vendee. To 
'^ conquer it is only to begin the fight. 
When it is completely subdued, what kind of 
weather have jon ? None whatever. 

What is this New England ? A countr^^ ? No : 
a camp. It is alternateh' invaded by the h3^per- 
borean legions and by the wilting sirens of the 
tropics. Icicles hang always on its northern 
heights ; its seacoasts are fringed with mosquitoes. 
There is for a third of the year a contest between 
the icy air of the pole and the warm wind of the 
gulf. The result of this is a compromise : the 

149 



150 HOW SPRING CAME IK NEW ENGLAND. 

compromise is called Thaw. It is the normal 
condition in New England. The New-Englander 
is a person who is always just about to be warm 
and comfortable. This is the stuff of which 
heroes and martjTs are made. A person thor- 
oughly heated or frozen is good for nothing. 
Look at the Bongos. Examine (on the map) the 
Dog-Eib nation. The New-Englander, by in- 
cessant activity, hopes to get warm. Edwards 
made his theology. Thank God, New England 
is not in Paris ! 

Hudson's Bay, Labrador, Grinnell's Land, a 
whole zone of ice and walruses, make it un- 
pleasant for New England. This icy cover, like 
the lid of a pot, is alwa3^s suspended over it : 
when it shuts down, that is winter. This would 
be intolerable, were it not for the Gulf Stream. 
The Gulf Stream is a benign, liquid force, flow- 
ing from under the ribs of the equator, — a white 
knight of the South going up to battle the giant 
of the North. The two meet in New England, 
and have it out there. 

This is the theory ; but, in fact, the Gulf 



now SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 151 

Stream is mostl}^ a delusion as to New England. 
For Ireland it is quite another thing. Potatoes 
ripen in Ireland before they are planted in New 
England. That is the reason the Irish emigrate : 
they desire two crops the same j^ear. The Gulf 
Stream gets shunted off from New England by 
the formation of the coast below : besides, it is 
too shallow to be of any service. Icebergs float 
down agtrlnst its surface-current, and fill all the 
New-England air with the chill of death till 
June : after that the fogs drift down from New- 
foundland. There never was such a mockery as 
this Gulf Stream. It is hke the English influ- 
ence on France, on Europe. Pitt was an ice- 
berg. 

Still New England survives. To what pur- 
pose? I sa}^, as an example: the politician 
says, to produce " Poor Boys." Bah ! The poor 
boy is an anachronism in civilization. He is no 
longer poor, and he is not a 'boy. In Tartary 
they would hang him for sucking all the asses' 
milk that belongs to the children : in New Eng- 
land he has all the qream from the Pubhc Cow. 



152 HOW SPRING CAME IZV liEW ENGLAND. 

What can 3'ou expect in a country where one 
knows not to-day what the weather will be to- 
morrow? Climate makes the man. Suppose he, 
too, dwells on the Channel Islands, where he has 
all chmates, and is superior to all. Perhaps he 
will become the prophet, the seer, of his age, as 
he is its Poet. The New-Englander is the man 
without a climate. Why is his country recog- 
nized? You won't find it on any map of Paris. 

And yet Paris is the universe. Strange anom- 
oly ! The greater must include the less ; but 
how if the less leaks out ? This sometimes hap- 
pens. 

And yet there are phenomena in that country 
worth observing. One of them is the conduct of 
Nature from the 1st of March to the 1st of June, 
or, as some say, from the vernal equinox to the 
summer solstice. As Tourmalain remarked, 
" You'd better observe the unpleasant than to 
be blind." This was in 802. Tourmalain is 
dead ; so is Gross Alain ; so is little Pee -Wee : 
we shall all be dead before things get any 
better. 



now SPRING CAME W NEW ENGLAND. 153 

That is the law. Without revolution there is 
nothing. What is revolution? It is turning 
society over, and putting the best underground 
for a fertilizer. Thus only will things grow. 
AYhat has this to do with New England ? In the 
language of that flash of social lightning, Beran- 
ger, ' ' Ma}' the Devil fly away with me if I can 
see!" 

Let us speak of the period in the year in New 
England when winter appears to hesitate. Ex- 
cept in the calendar, the action is ironical ; but it 
is still deceptive. The sun mounts high : it is 
above the horizon twelve hours at a time. The 
snow gradually sneaks away in hquid repentance. 
One morning it is gone, except in shaded spots 
and close by the fences. From about the trunks 
of the trees it has long departed : the tree is a 
hving thing, and its growth repels it. The fence 
is dead, driven into the earth in a rigid line by 
man: the fence, in short, is dogma: icy preju- 
dice lingers near it. 

The snow has disappeared ; but the landscape 
is a ghastly sight, — bleached, dead. The trees 



154 now SPRmG CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 

are stakes ; the grass is of no color ; and the 
bare soil is not brown with a healthful brown ; 
life has gone out of it. Take up a XDiece of turf: 
it is a clod, without warmth, inanimate. Pull it 
in pieces : there is no hope in it : it is a part of 
the past ; it is the refuse of last year. This is 
the condition to which winter has reduced the 
landscape. When the snow, which was a pall, 
is removed, you see how ghastly it is. The face 
of the country is sodden. It needs now onl}^ the 
south wind to sweep over it, full of the damp 
breath of death ; and that begins to blow. No 
prospect would be more dreary. 

And j'Ct the south wind fills credulous man 
with joy. He opens the window. He goes out, 
and catches cold. He is stirred by the mysteri- 
ous coming of something. If there is sign of 
change nowhere else, we detect it in the news- 
paper. In sheltered corners of that truculent 
instrument for the diffusion of the prejudices of 
the few among the many begin to grow the 
violets of tender sentiment, the early greens of 
yearning. The poet feels the sap of the new^ 



HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 155 

year before the marsh- willow. He blossoms in 
advance of the catkins. Man is greater than 
Nature. The poet is greater than man: he is 
nature on two legs, — ambulatory. 

At first there is no appearance of conflict. 
The winter gan-ison seems to have withdrawn. 
The invading hosts of the South are entering 
without opposition. The hard ground softens ; 
the sun lies warm upon the southern bank, and 
water oozes from its base. If jovl examine the 
buds of the lilac and the flowering shrubs, you 
cannot say that they are swelling ; but the var- 
nish with whicn they were coated in the fall to 
keep out the frost seems to be cracking. If 
the sugar-maple is hacked, it will bleed, — the 
pure white blood of Nature. 

At the close of a sunny day the western sk}^ 
has a softened aspect : its color, we say, has 
warmth in it. On such a day you may meet a 
caterpillar on the footpath, and turn out for him. 
The house-fly thaws out ; a company of cheerful 
wasps take possession of a chamber- window. It 
is oppressive indoors at night, and the window 



156 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 

is raised. A flock of millers, born out of time, 
flutter in. It is most unusual weather for the 
season : it is so every year. The delusion is 
complete, when, on a mild evening, the tree- 
toads open their brittle-brattle chorus on the edge 
of the pond. The citizen asks his neighbor, 
"Did you hear the frogs last night?" That 
seems to open the new world. One thinks of his 
childhood and its innocence, and of his first loves. 
It fills one with sentiment and a tender longing, 
this voice of the tree-toad. Man is a strange 
being. Deaf to the prayers of friends, to the 
sermons and warnings of the church, to the calls 
of duty, to the pleadings of his better nature, he 
is touched by the tree-toad. The signs of the 
spring multiply. The passer in the street in 
the evening sees the maid-servant leaning on the 
area-gate in sweet converse with some one lean- 
ing on the other side ; or in the park, which is 
still too damp for any thing but true afi'ection, he 
sees her seated by the side of one who is able to 
protect her from the policeman, and hears her 
sigh, " How sweet it is to be with those we love 
to be with! " 



HOW SPEING CAME Ilf NEW ENGLAND. 157 

All this is very well ; but next morning the 
newspaper nips these early buds of sentiment. 
The telegraph announces, " Twenty feet of snow 
at Ogclen , on the Pacific Road ; winds blowing a 
gale at Omaha, and snow still falhng ; mercury 
frozen at Duluth ; storm-signals at Port Huron.". 

Where now are 3^our tree-toads, 3^our young 
love, your earl}^ season? Before noon it rains; 
by three o'clock it hails ; before night the bleak 
storm-cloud of the north-west envelops the sky ; 
a gale is raging, whirling about a tempest of 
snow. By morning the snow is drifted in banlvs, 
and two feet deep on a level. Early in the seven- 
teenth century, Drebbel of Holland invented the 
weather-glass. Before that, men had suffered 
without knowing the degree of their suffering. 
A century later, Rbmer hit upon the idea of 
using mercury in a thermometer ; and Fahrenheit 
constructed the instrument which adds a new 
because distinct terror to the weather. Science 
names and registers the ills pf life ; and j^et it is 
a gain to know the names and habits of our ene- 
mies. It is with some satisfaction in our knowl- 
edge that we say the thermometer marks zero. 



158 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 

In fact, the wild beast called Winter, untamed, 
has returned, and taken possession of New Eng 
land. Nature, giving up her melting mood, has 
retired into dumbness and white stagnation. But 
we are wise. We saj- it is better to have it now 
than later. We have a conceit of understanding 
things. 

Extraordinary blindness ! 

The sun is in alliance with the earth. Between 
the two the snow is uncomfortable. Compelled 
to go, it decides to go suddenh^ The first day 
there is slush with rain ; the second da}', mud 
with hail ; the third day, a flood with sunshine. 
The thermometer declares that the temperature is 
delightful. Man shivers and sneezes. His neigh- 
bor dies of some disease newly named by science ; 
but he dies all the same as if it hadn't been newly 
named. Science has not discovered any name 
that is not fatal. 

This is called the breaking-up of winter. 

Nature seems for ,some days to be in doubt, 
not exactly able to stand still, not daring to put 
forth any thing tender. Man saj^s that the worst 



HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 159 

is over. If he should live a thousand years, he 
would be deceived every year. And this is called 
an age of scei3ticism. Man never believed in so 
many things as now : he never believed so much 
in himself. As to Nature, he knows her secrets : 
he can predict what she will do. Pie communi- 
cates with the next world by means of an alpha- 
bet which he has invented. He talks with souls 
at the other end of the spirit-wire. To be sure, 
neither of them says any thing ; but they talk. 
Is not that something? He suspends the law of 
gravitation as to his own body — he has learned 
how to evade it — as tjTants suspend the legal 
writs of habeas corpus. When Gravitation asks 
for his bod}^, she cannot have it. He saj^s of 
himself, "lam infallible; I am sublime." He 
believes aU these things. He is master of the 
elements. Shakspeare sends him a poem just 
made, and as good a j)oem as the man could 
write himself. And yet this man — he goes out 
of doors without his overcoat, catches cold, and 
is buried in three da^'s. " On the 21st of Janu- 
ary," exclaimed Mercier, " aU kings felt for the 



IGO HOW SPEIIIG CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 

backs of their necks." This might be said of 
all men in New England in the spring. This is 
the season that all the poets celebrate. Let ns 
snppose that once, in Thessal}^, there was a genial 
spring, and there was a poet who sang of it. All 
later poets have sung the same song. " Voila 
tout! " That is the root of poetr}^ 

Another delusion. We hear toward evening, 
high in air, the "conk" of the wild-geese. 
Looking up, you see the black specks of that 
adventurous triangle, winging along in rapid 
flight northward. Perhaps it takes a wide re- 
turning sweep, in doubt ; but it disappears in the 
north. There is no mistaking that sign. This 
unmusical "conk" is sweeter than the "ker- 
chunk" of the bull-frog. Probably these birds 
are not idiots, and probably they turned back 
south again after spying out the nakedness of 
the land ; but they have made their sign. Next 
day there is a rumor that somebody has seen a 
blue-bird. This rumor, unhappily for the bird 
(which will freeze to death) , is confirmed. In 
less than three days everj'body has seen a blue- 



HOW SPEIjVG came IN NEW ENGLAND. 161 

bird 5 and favored people have heard a robin, or 
rather the yellow-breasted thrush, misnamed a 
robin in America. This is no doubt true : for 
angle-worms have b^en seen on the surface of the 
ground ; and, wherever there is any thing to eat, 
the robin is promptly on hand. About this time 
you notice, in protected, sunny spots, that the 
grass has a little color. But 3^ou sa}^ that it is 
the grass of last fall. It is very difficult to tell 
when the grass of last fall became the grass of 
this spring. It looks " warmed over." The 
green is rusty. The lilac-buds have certainlj^ 
swollen a little, and so have those of the soft 
maple. In the rain the grass does not brighten 
as you think it ought to, and it is only when the 
rain turns to snow that you see anj^ decided green 
color by contrast with the white. The snow 
gradually covers every thing very quietl}^, how- 
ever. Winter comes back without the least noise 
or bustle, tireless, malicious, implacable. Neither 
party in the fight now makes much fuss over it ; 
and you might think that Nature had surrendered 
altogether, if 3'ou did not find about this time, 



162 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND, 

in the woods, on the edge of a snow-bank, the 
modest blossoms of the trailing arbutus, shedding 
their delicious perfume. The bravest are alwa^^s 
the tenderest, sa3^s the poet^ The season, in its 
blind wa}^, is trying to express itself. 

And it is assisted. There is a cheerful chatter 
in the trees. The blackbirds have come, and in 
numbers, households of them, villages of them, 
— communes, rather. The}^ do not believe in 
God, these blackbirds. They think they can 
take care of themselves. We shall see. Bat 
they are well informed. They arrived just as the 
last snow-bank melted. One cannot say now 
that there is not greenness in the grass ; not in 
the wide fields, to be sure, but on lawns and 
banks sloping south. The dark-spotted leaves 
of the dog-tooth violet begin to show. Even 
Fahrenheit's contrivance joins in the upward 
movement : the mercury has suddenly gone up 
from thirty degrees to sixty-five degrees. It is 
time for the ice-man. Ice has no sooner disap- 
peared than we desire it. 

There is a smile, if one may say so, in the 



HOW SPBING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 163 

blue sky, and there is softness in the south wind. 
The song-sparrow is singing in the apple-tree. 
Another bird-note is heard, — two long, musical 
whistles, liquid but metallic. A brown bird this 
one, darker than the song-sparrow, and without 
the latter' s light stripes, and smaller, yet bigger 
than the queer little chipping-bird . He wants a 
familiar name, this sweet singer, who appears to 
be a sort of sparrow. He is such a contrast to 
the blue-ja^^s, who have arrived in a passion, 
as usual, screaming and scolding, the elegant, 
spoiled beauties ! They wrangle from morning 
till night, these beautiful, high- tempered aristo- 
crats. 

Encouraged by the birds, by the bursting of 
the lilac-buds, by the peeping-up of the. crocuses, 
by tradition, b}' the sweet flutterings of a double 
hope, another sign appears. This is the Easter 
bonnets, most delightful flowers of the 3'ear, 
emblems of innocence, hope, devotion. Alas 
that the}^ have to be worn under umbrellas, so 
much thought, freshness, feeling, tenderness, 
have o-one into them ! And a north-east storm 



164 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 

of rain, accompanied with hail, comes to crown 
all these virtues with that of self-sacrifice. The 
frail hat is offered up to the implacable season. 
In fact, Nature is not to be forestalled nor hur- 
ried in this way. Things cannot be pushed. 
Nature hesitates. The woman who does not 
hesitate in April is lost. The appearance of the 
bonnets is premature. The blackbirds see it. 
They assemble. For two daj^s they hold a noisy 
convention, with high debate, in the tree-tops. 
Something is going to happen. 

Say, rather, the usual thing is about to occur. 
There is a wind called Auster, another called 
Eurus, another called Septentrio, another Me- 
ridies, besides Aquilo, Vulturnus, Africus. 
There are the eight great winds of the classical 
dictionarj^, — arsenal of mj'stery and terror and 
of the unknown, — besides the wind Euroaquilo 
of St. Luke. This is the wind that drives an 
apostle wishing to gain Crete upon the African 
Syrtis. If St. Luke had been tacking to get to 
Hyannis, this wind would have forced him into 
Holmes's Hole. The Euroaquilo is no respecter 
of persons. 



HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 165 

These winds, and others unnamed and more 
terrible, circle about New England. The}^ form 
a ring about it : they lie in wait on its borders, 
but only to spring upon it and harry it. They 
follow each other in contracting circles, in whirl- 
winds, in maelstroms of the atmosphere : they 
meet and cross each other, all at a moment. 
This New England is set apart : it is the exer- 
cise-ground of the weather. Storms bred else- 
where come here fuU-gTown: they come in 
couples, in quartets, in choruses. If New Eng- 
land were not mostly rock, these winds would 
carry it off; but they would bring it aU back 
again, as happens with the sandy portions. What 
sharp Eurus carries to Jersey, Africus brings 
back. When the air is not full of snow, it is fall 
of dust. This is called one of the compensations 
of Nature. 

This is what happened after the convention of 
the blackbirds : A moaning south wind brought 
rain ; a south-west wind turned the rain to snow ; 
what is called a zeph3T, out of the west, drifted 
the snow ; a north wind sent the mercury far 



166 HOW SPRING GAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 

below freezing. Salt added to snow increases 
the evaporation and the cold. This was the 
office of the north-east wind : it made the snow 
damp, and increased its bullv ; but then it rained 
a little, and froze, thawing at the same time. 
The air was full of fog and snow and rain. 
And then the wind changed, went back round 
the circle, reversing every thing, like dragging a 
cat by its tail. The mercury approached zero. 
This was nothing uncommon. We know all these 
winds. We are familiar with the different "forms 
of water." 

All this was only the prologue, the overture. 
If one might be permitted to speak scientifically, 
it was only the tuning of the instruments. The 
opera was to come, — the Flying Dutchman of 
the air. 

There is a wind called Euroclydon : it would 
be one of the Eumenides ; only they are women. 
It is half-brother to the gigantic storm- wind of 
the equinox. The Euroclydon is not a wind : it 
is a monster. Its breath is frost. It has snow 
in its hair. It is something terrible. It peddles 
rheumatism, and plants consumption. 



HOW SPUING CAME IW NEW ENGLAND. 1G7 

The Eurocl3Tloii knew just the moment to strike 
into the discord of the weather in New England. 
From its lair about Point Desolation, from the 
glaciers of the Greenland continent, sweeping 
round the coast, lea\'ing wrecks in its track, it 
marched right athwart the other conflicting 
winds, churning them into a fur}^, and inaugurat- 
ing chaos. It was the Marat of the elements. 
It was the revolution marching into the ' ' dreaded 
wood of La Sandraie." 

Let us sum it all up in one word : it was some- 
thing for which there is no name. 

Its track was destruction. On the sea it leaves 
wrecks. What does it leave on land? Funerals. 
When it subsides, New England is prostrate. It 
has left its legacy" : this legacy is coughs and 
patent medicines. This is an epic ; this is des- 
tin}^ You think Providence is expelled out of 
New England ? Listen ! 

Two daj^s after Euroclydon, I found in the 
woods the hepatica — earliest of wildwood flowers, 
evidently not intimidated by the wild work of the 
armies trampling over New England — daring to 



168 HOW SPRIJSrG CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 

hold up its tender blossom. One could not but 
admire the quiet pertinacity of Nature. She had 
been painting the grass under the snow. In 
spots it was vivid green. There was a mild rain, 
— mild, but chilly. The clouds gathered, and 
broke away in light, fleecy masses. There was 
a softness on the hills. The birds suddenly 
were on every tree, glancing through the air, 
filling it with song, sometimes shaking rain-drops 
from their wings. The cat brings in one in his 
mouth. He thinks the season has begun, and 
the game-laws are off. He is fond of Nature, 
this cat, as we all are : he wants to possess it. 
At four o'clock in the morning there is a grand 
dress-rehearsal of the birds. Not all the pieces 
of the orchestra have arrived ; but there are 
enough. The grass-sparrow has come. This is 
certainly charming. The gardener comes to talk 
about seeds : he uncovers the strawberries and 
the grape-vines, salts the asparagus-bed, and 
plants the peas. You ask if he planted them 
with a shot-gun. In the shade there is still frost 
in the ground. Nature, in fact, still hesitates, 



now SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 1G9 

puts forth one hepatica at a time, and waits to 
see the result ; pushes up the grass slowl}^, per- 
haps draws it in at night. 

This indecision we call Spring. 

It becomes painful. It is lilve being on the 
rack for ninety days, expecting every day a re- 
prieve. Men grow hardened to it, however. 

This is the order with man, — hope, surprise, 
bewilderment, disgust, facetiousness. The peo- 
ple in New England finally become facetious 
about spring. This is the last stage : it is the 
most dangerous. When a man has come to make 
a jest of misfortune, he is lost. "It bores me 
to die," said the journalist Carra to the heads- 
man at the foot of the guillotine : " I would like 
to have seen the continuation." One is also 
interested to see how spring is going to turn out. 

A day of sun, of delusive bird-singing, sight 
of the mellow earth, — all these begin to beget 
confidence. The night, even, has been warm. 
But what is this in the morning journal at break- 
fast? — " An area of low pressure is moving from 
the Tortuaas north." You shudder. 



170 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 

What is this Low Pressure itself, — it ? It is 
something frightful, low, crouching, creeping, 
advancing ; it is a foreboding ; it is misfortune 
by telegraph ; it is the " '93 " of the atmosphere. 

This low pressure is a creation of Old Prob. 
What is that? Old Prob. is the new deity of the 
Americans, greater than JEolus, more despotic 
than Sans-Culotte. The wind is his servitor, the 
lightning his messenger. He is a mystery made 
of six parts electricity, and one part "guess." 
This deity is worshipped by the Americans ; his 
name is on every man's lips first in the morning ; 
he is the Frankenstein of modern science. 
Housed at Washington, his business is to direct 
tlie storms of the whole country upon New Eng- 
land, and to give notice in advance. This he 
does. Sometimes he sends the storm, and then 
gives notice. This is mere plaj^fulness on his 
part : it is all one to him. His great power is in 
the low pressure. 

On the Bexar plains of Texas, among the hills 
of the Presidio, along the Rio Grande, low press- 
ure is bred ; it is nursed also in the Atchafala3'a 



now SPRING CAME AY NEW ENGLAND. 171 

swamps of Louisiana ; it moves hy the way of 
Thibodeaux and Bonnet Carre. The south-west 
is a magazine of atmospheric disasters. Low 
pressure ma^^ be no worse than the others : it is 
better known, and is most used to inspire terror. 
It can be summoned an}^ time also fj'om tlie 
everglades of Florida, from the morasses of the 
Okeechobee. 

When the New-Englander sees this in his 
newspaper, he knows what it means. He has 
twenty-four hours' warning ; but what can he 
do ? Nothing but watch its certain advance by 
telegraph. He suffers in anticipation. That is 
what Old Prob. has brought about, — suffering 
by anticipation. This low pressure advances 
against the wind. The wind is from the north- 
east. Nothing oould be more unpleasant than a 
north-east wind ? Wait till low pressure joins it. 
Together they make spring in New England. 
A north-east storm from the south-west ! — there 
is no bitterer satire than this. It lasts three 
days. After that the weather changes into some- 
thino- winter-like. 



172 HOW SPRING CA3fE IN NEW ENGLAND. 

A solitary song-sparrow, without a note of joy, 
hops along the snow to the dining-room window, 
and, turning his httle head aside, looks up. He 
is hungry and cold. Little Minnette, clasping 
her hands behind her back, stands and looks at 
him, and says, "Po' birdie!" They appear to 
understand each other. The sparrow gets his 
crumbs ; but he knows too much to let Minnette 
get hold of him. Neither of these little things 
could take care of itself in a New-England spring 
— not in the depths of it. This is what the 
father of Minnette, looking out of the window 
upon the wide waste of snow, and the evergreens 
bent to the ground with the weight of it, saj^s, 
"It looks like the depths of spring." To this 
has man come : to his facetiousness has succeeded 
sarcasm. It is the first of May. 

Then follows a day of bright sun and blue sk}^ 
The birds open the morning with a lively chorus. 
In spite of Auster, Euroclydon, low pressure, 
and the government bureau, things have gone 
forward. By the roadside, where the snow has 
just melted, the grass is of the color of emerald. 



HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 173 

The heart leaps to see it. On the lawn there are 
twent3^ robins, lively, noisy, worm-seeking. Their 
yellow breasts contrast with the tender green of 
the newl}^- springing clover and herd's-grass. If 
they would only stand still, we might think the 
dandelions had blossomed. On an evergreen- 
bough, looking at them, sits a graceful bird, 
whose back is bluer than the sk3^ There is a red 
tint on the tips of the boughs of the hard maple. 
With Nature, color is life. See, already, green, 
3'ellow, blue, red ! In a few days — is it not so ? 
— through the green masses of the trees will 
flash the orange of the oriole, the scarlet of the 
tanager ; perhaps to-morrow. 

But, in fact, the next daj^ opens a little sourly. 
It is almost clear overhead : but the clouds 
thicken on the horizon ; they look leaden ; they 
threaten rain. It certainty will rain : the air 
feels like rain, or snow. By noon it begins to 
snow, and you hear the desolate cry of the 
phoebe-bird. It is a fine snow, gentle at first ; 
but it soon drives in swerving lines, for the wind 
is from the south-west, from the west, from the 



174 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 

north-east, from the zenith (one of the ordinary 
winds of New England), from all points of the 
compass. The fine snow becomes rain ; it be- 
comes large snow ; it melts as it falls ; it freezes 
as it falls. At last a storm sets in, ajid night 
shuts down upon the bleak scene. 

During the night there is a change. It thun- 
ders and lightens. Toward morning there is a 
brilhant display of aurora borealis. This is a 
sign of colder weather. 

The gardener is in despair ; so is the sports- 
man. The trout take no pleasure in biting in 
such weather. Paragraphs appear in the news- 
papers, copied from the paper of last year, sa^^- 
ing that this is the most severe spring in thirty 
years. Every one, in fact, believes that it is, 
and also that next year the spring will be early. 
Man is the most gullible of creatures. 

And with reason : he trusts his e3^es, and not 
his instinct. During this most sour weather of 
the year, the anemone blossoms ; and, almost 
immediately after, the fairy pencil, the spring 
beauty, the dog-tooth violet, and the true violet. 



HOW SPEING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 175 

In clouds and fog, and rain and snow, and all 
discouragement. Nature pushes on her forces 
with progressive haste and rapidit3^ Before one 
is aware, all the lawns and meadows are deeply 
green, the trees are opening their tender leaves. 
In a burst of sunshine the cherr3'-trees are white, 
the Judas-tree is pink, the hawthorns give a 
sweet smell. The air is full of sweetness ; the 
world, of color. 

In the midst of a chilling north-east storm the 
ground is strewed with the white-and-pink blos- 
soms from the apple-trees. The next da}^ the 
mercury stands at eighty degrees. Summer has 
come. 

There was no Spring. 

The winter is over. You tliiiik so? Robes- 
pierre thought the Revolution was over in the 
beginning of his last Thermidor. He lost his 
head after that. 

When the first buds are set, and the corn is 
up, and the cucumbers have four leaves, a mali- 
cious frost steals down from the north and kills 
them in a nioht. 



176 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 

That is the last effort of spring. The mercury 
then mounts to ninety degrees. The season has 
been long, but, on the whole, successful. Many 
people survive it. 




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